Pentagon reload: ‘US army loses to military contractors’
The US military is to shift its focus from troops to technologies, Barack Obama has declared. The return of Cold War priorities clearly shows who the winner was in the fight for the shrinking US budget, says RT’s military analyst, Evgeny Khrushchev.
President Obama’s plan for the Department of Defense, announced on Thursday, calls for a reduction in ground forces now that al-Qaeda’s leadership has been decimated. The new priorities will be improved surveillance and cyber warfare capability, alongside enhanced special forces operations. The new strategy is not driven by the White House’s vision of national security, argues RT’s Evgeny Khrushchev. It is a result of ferocious and intense lobbying by the US military industrial complex. “There are two losers: the US army and Marine Corps. US military contractors are the main winners in this new war for the shrinking US budget. The military industrial complex will be the main beneficiary of the troops downsizing and extension of the military’s big ticket high tech items,” says the military analyst.
Forget Afghanistan, it’s China now
In other words, this new scenario means no more and no less than “a classic Cold War arms race” which will cost zillions of dollars, says Khrushchev. But this time it will be waged against an “imaginary, perceived threat” from China. America’s so called “soft power” strategy failed in Iraq, where the situation deteriorated within 24 hours of the last American troops being withdrawn. The US officially agreeing to allow the Taliban to set up an office in Qatar is by default an admission of its failure in Afghanistan – and Pakistan as well, according to Khrushchev.This explains the new strategy’s shift from Central and South-East Asia to the Asia Pacific region, continues the analyst. This is why Iraq and Afghanistan’s low-intensity counter-insurgency will be replaced by a China-focused high-tech military threat projection.But at the end of the day, the new policy will emerge as all too familiar, points out Khrushchev. It was the same low-footprint, high-tech strategy with which the US opened up hostilities in Afghanistan in an operation entitled “Enduring Freedom” more than 10 years ago.
