Basic

https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/how-americas-armaments-manufacturers

https://theduran.com/how-americas-armaments-manufacturers-have-controlled-the-u-s-

How America’s Armaments Manufacturers Have Controlled the U.S. Government Since 25 July 1945

14 February 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Unlike any other sector of the U.S. stock market, the armaments firms and (to a lesser extent) the rest of the sellers to the U.S. Department of ‘Defense’ (these likewise being called “U.S. Government contractors”) sell to the U.S. Government and its colonies (‘allies’), instead of to consumers. This is the reason why America is a purely capitalist economy (except for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security), but many other countries aren’t purely capitalist, but are socialist in some major sectors of the economy, such as both Russia and China still purchasing their weapons almost exclusively from firms that they themselves control (own more than 50% of its stock). This means that whereas in the U.S., a successful weapons-manufacturer for its military, needs to control the Government in order to control not only its main market (which is its own Government) but also its subsidiary markets (the empire’s colonies’ Governments), partly-socialist countries such as Russia and China buy their weapons ONLY from firms that they themselves effectively control, so that the weapons are designed and manufactured so as to keep their costs as low as possible and their effectiveness as high as possible — NOT to maximize profits but to maximize actual national defense. In other words: a capitalist nation needs to be deeply corrupt in regard to its military. Unlike a consumer-products-and-services corporation, which, in order to be profitable at all, needs to control only a niche (or niches) in the consumer markets, the military manufacturers and services, in a capitalist country, need to control the Government.

In order for such a country to be able to claim to be a “democracy,” it needs to have an elected Government; and, so, the way to control the Government is to deceive its public. (Such a Government defines “democracy” so as to apply it also to dictatorships that have elected Governments.) This is the reason why a capitalist country (which is controlled by its billionaires, who fund the careers of the elected leaders of the Government) needs to have the billionaires not only controlling the ‘defense’ firms but ALSO the media, including newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, digital-online, and the think tanks and universities that those media call upon and cite as ‘experts’ — all of the nation’s propaganda-organizations — in order so that the ‘defense’ firms will be able to control their market — their Government.

This is the modern type of capitalist dictatorship or “fascism.”

For example: a study published in 2022 by Bernstein Research found (as reported on its page 75) that, for one typical ‘defense’ corporation, Northrop Grumman, its “stock has outperformed the S&P 500 by 451% over the last 10 years.” Furthermore,  “Defense stocks … also tend to outperform through recessions and are uncorrelated with inflation.” This is the type of extraordinary profitability that a corporation which controls its own market normally achieves; and, in the U.S., ‘defense’ stocks started taking off like a rocket in 1991 and have been continuing that astounding growth ever since. The less necessary that a capitalist nation’s military is for protecting the nation — like in the U.S. since 1991 when the Soviet Union ended — the more profitable its military manufacturers are, because the corruption then becomes virtually unlimited (see this and this for the evidence). Right now, the U.S. Government spends 65% — almost two-thirds — of the entire world’s military expenditures — almost twice what all of the world’s 200 other nations together spend. Now, THAT’S corruption, on a massive scale! It’s shown right there, in those numbers. In fact, the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department is SO deeply corrupt that it is the ONLY federal Department that has never passed an audit. Congress routinely complains about that — and then reliably increases the Pentagon’s budget even more — completely oblivious to the rot they all know that they are thereby funding, for the taxpayers and future generations of Americans to pay off, while the billionaires become even more enormously richer than the public, than ever before.

On 13 March 2022, U.S. News & World Report headlined “These Countries Have the Strongest Militaries”, and ranked them (the top 10): 1. Russia (last surveyed in 2021; all the others were in 2022); 2. U.S.; 3. Israel; 4. China; 5. South Korea; 6. Iran; 7. UK; 8. Ukraine; 9. Germany; 10. Turkey. The U.S. annually has been spending around 12 times what Russia spends on its military.

On 14 February 2025 (today), the AP headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling”, and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (the five functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds.

This is obviously a dictatorship, with little if any (other than of only the most formalistic type) of actual democratic legitimacy. It heads what it and its colonies (‘allies’) call “the free world.”

Right now, both the prior Biden Administration and the new Trump Administration are pressuring their colonies (‘allies’) to increase their military expenditures, in order to keep this soaring wealth for their billionaires going. (Six of the ten biggest armaments-manufacturers in the entire world are American.) Continuation of the current U.S.-backed wars and perhaps starting some new ones, will be needed in order to make this happen (especially because no nation is trying to conquer America but America craves to conquer every nation it doesn’t already control — so, virtually all of this money is waste); and, therefore, as the U.S. Government has been doing ever since 1945 and especially after 1991 (when the Soviet Union ended), what’s needed is creating international chaos, civil wars, and failed states. But this also means that existing wars must be continued as long as possible. Furthermore, on 8 January 2025, the President-elect Donald Trump indicated that if his previously announced intention for the U.S. to buy Greenland, and the Panama Canal, gets rejected in the negotiations, then he will seize them militarily, because “We need them for economic security.” This means that he uses the military not ONLY for national security (which is the defensive use of it) but ALSO for “economic security” (which is the aggressive use of it — as being an additional tool in order to gain economic advantage against other countries — to use the military in order to acquire new colonies or else to cement one’s rule over existing colonies). And he said there that the same thing might apply also to Canada. So: Denmark, Greenland, Canada, and America’s other colonies, could soon find themselves at war against America — no longer is it only such countries as Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea, that the U.S. regime targets. It would mean the utter destruction of international law.

On 21 May 2017, just months into Trump’s first term, I headlined “U.S. $350 Billion Arms-Sale to Sauds Cements U.S.-Jihadist Alliance”, and reported his very first major achievement as President, the largest armaments-sale in world history (which the ‘news’-media reported as having been only $100 billion — merely the first year of what was actually a ten-year deal. No one questions that Trump is enormously concerned to maximize the sales-volumes of America’s armaments-makers. (Then, on 23 October 2018, I reported that subsequently this deal was increased to $400 billion, and then to $404 billion.)

The great economist Michael Hudson, in a 13 February 2024 summary of his 1972  book, Super Imperialsim, said that (at 5:04 in the video)

5:04

What my book Super Imperialism was about, uh [is] how America was driven off the gold

5:09

standard because of the balance of payments drain from the Vietnam War and

5:15

for the world's military spending [most of which was purchasing from U.S. firms such as Lockheed Martin] uh up to 1971. The entire U.S. balance of payments

5:23

deficit from the Korean war in 1950 all the way through the 50s the 60s and into

5:31

the 70s was military spending.

5:33

It is interesting how the U.S. regime goes about hiding what Hudson says. For example, if you do a Google search (and none of the other search-engines are any better) for “Super Imperialism,” you will find that the CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists (blocks from linking to) sites that aren’t CIA-approved) article on “Super Imperialism” opens with “Super-imperialism is a Marxist term,” and then says “The expression super-imperialism first appeared in November 1914 as an inaccurate translation of the newly coined German term Ultra-Imperialismus. William E. Bohn, the translator of Karl Kautsky’s article "Der Imperialismus" ("The Imperialism"),^[2] seemed to believe that the terms Kartell and Ultra-Imperialismus were not reasonable for the audience of the International Socialist Review, an American Marxist journal.^[3]” 

However, “a Marxist term” is a word (so that Wikipedia’s allegation there should have instead been that it’s “a Marxist phrase”) that was introduced by Karl Marx. But Karl Marx actually died in 1883. So, it’s not even a Marxist phrase, much less a Marxist “term.” As to whether the CIA’s propaganda that Hudson is a “Marxist,” that would mean such things as that he advocates for the labor theory of value — things he has never advocated. So, it’s yet another CIA lie. 

This is just one of millions of examples of how the U.S. regime propagandizes so as to make America’s armaments firms the most profitable sector of any stock market, in any nation in the world.

Is America now a nation whose economy can succeed only by destroying other nations’ economies?

So, we have a Government that spends 65% of the entire world’s military expenses, and whose ‘Defense’ Department is the only Department that has never passed an audit, 

PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding — what the ‘news’-media ignore if they can, and deny if they must. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.