As a retired U.S. military officer, I’m appalled at the notion of “peace through strength.” You may as well say “war is peace.” Peace is achieved through dialogue. Diplomacy. Engagement. A spirit of good will. It isn’t achieved by brandishing weapons while selling the same around the globe. (The U.S. dominates the global arms trade, accounting for nearly half of it.)
I’m also outraged by the ongoing militarism of this moment, whether it’s Kamala Harris celebrating military lethality and embracing the Cheneys in 2024 or the Trump crowd that embraces “warriors” and “warfighters.” The solemn tradition of the citizen-soldier has long been abandoned in the U.S., replaced as it has been by a mercenary mindset that sees war as permanent and therefore “normal,” even admirable.
Even as we’re essentially being told and sold “war is peace,” we’re also being told and sold that ethnic cleansing in Gaza is urban renewal, a prelude to a new Riviera, a new playground for the rich, even if it’s erected on the bones of millions of Palestinians. Obviously, this cleansing of genocide using the imagery of crass and vulgar tourism must be condemned in no uncertain terms.
Put colloquially, I often wonder, Dude, where’s my country?
Explore Gaza, by Mr. Fish (at Chris Hedges’ Substack)
We’re #1 (once again) in selling weapons! Amazingly, the USA now accounts for 43% of the world’s trade in deadly weaponry. No country beats more plowshares into swords and pruning hooks into spears than America, which is also, obviously, the most Christian nation in the world.
Let’s take a look at a useful chart from Stephen Semler (be sure to check out his blogon Substack):
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Finding #1: The US is the world’s largest arms dealer
The US accounts for 43% of global arms exports, more than the next seven largest arms-exporting countries combined. All the countries outside the top eight account for less than 17% of the worldwide total.
^Alt text for screen readers: The U.S. exports more weapons than the next 7 largest arms exporters combined. This graph has two columns, one showing the U.S.’s 43% share of global arms transfers, and the other showing the combined share of France, Russia, China, Germany, Italy, U.K., and Israel, totaling 40.4%.
For another perspective on America’s record-breaking year of selling deadly weaponry, check out this column by Lenny Broytman.
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Way back in 2012, I wrote a column for TomDispatch: “Weapons ‘r’ us,” in which I examined America’s dominance of the weapons trade. Here’s what I wrote back then:
Yes, we’re the world’s foremost “merchants of death,” the title of a best-selling exposé of the international arms trade published to acclaim in the U.S. in 1934. Back then, most Americans saw themselves as war-avoiders rather than as war-profiteers. The evil war-profiteers were mainly European arms makers like Germany’s Krupp, France’s Schneider, or Britain’s Vickers.
Not that America didn’t have its own arms merchants. As the authors of Merchants of Death noted, early on our country demonstrated a “Yankee propensity for extracting novel death-dealing knickknacks from [our] peddler’s pack.” Amazingly, the Nye Committee in the U.S. Senate devoted 93 hearings from 1934 to 1936 to exposing America’s own “greedy munitions interests.” Even in those desperate depression days, a desire for profit and jobs was balanced by a strong sense of unease at this deadly trade, an unease reinforced by the horrors of and hecatombs of dead from the First World War.
We are uneasy no more. Today we take great pride (or at least have no shame) in being by far the world’s number one arms-exporting nation. A few statistics bear this out. From 2006 to 2010, the U.S. accounted for nearly one-third of the world’s arms exports, easily surpassing a resurgent Russia in the “Lords of War” race. Despite a decline in global arms sales in 2010 due to recessionary pressures, the U.S. increased its market share, accounting for a whopping 53% of the trade that year. Last year saw the U.S. on pace to deliver more than $46 billion in foreign arms sales. Who says America isn’t number one anymore?
Who, indeed? And we remain, of course, our own best customers, as this year’s Pentagon budget soars to $900 billion, even as the Trump administration argues for “peace through strength,” or, put bluntly, peace through superior firepower.
Only in America is Jesus heavily armed and packing heat. Truly exceptional!
Obviously, American Jesus preached peace through strength
Bracing Views 