‘Someone will make money by stoking fears’ – Ron Paul on new US missile doctrine

The new US missile defense strategy is a boondoggle for the military-industrial complex, which will drive the US into more debt and can bring misery upon multiple nations by fueling an arms race, ex-US Congressman Ron Paul said.

Plans to weaponize space with a new layer of sensors unveiled by Trump as part of his administration's Missile Defense Review is an unnecessary and hard-to-implement project that is sure to enrich the military-industrial lobby, Paul told RT.

"The biggest issue here is someone is going to make a lot of money on it. It reminds me of Star Wars. They've never really developed it, but people got excited about it," Paul said, drawing parallels between President Donald Trump's new endeavor and former President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative program.

Addressing the Pentagon on Thursday, Trump said that the goal of deploying ground-based interceptors to Alaska and sensors in space is to stop missile launches by hostile powers over their own territory.

Paul says the scale of the threat to US security has been overblown and does not warrant such extravagant means, which might not end up being efficient.

"I'm all for having defensive weapons if necessary, but I can't quite see the danger that they are talking about that we have to now go much further into debt on something that can take many, many years and there are questions on how well it would work," he said.

The mammoth project is another way of throwing more money at the military, Paul said, noting that the US is "already running a trillion-dollar debt every year" and will have to borrow money to pay for the futuristic missile defense shield.

National debt stands at over $21 trillion and continues to surge, with the federal deficit projected to top $1 trillion by 2020. 

While it remains to be seen if Congress approves the major increase in funding that would be required to implement Trump's plan, Paul says it's unlikely to be nearly as contentious as Trump's $5bn border wall that triggered a record-breaking government shutdown.

"But it seems like the money they spend on the military-industrial complex never gets the same scrutiny as some of these political issues," Paul said.

Defense, unlike other political issues, tends to transcend party lines, as it "is more involved with money than anything else."

"Fiscal conservatives are big spenders as much as liberals," he said.

Of course, it also comes in handy to have the "usual scapegoats, the countries that they are able to stir animosity towards."

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The US will inevitably whip up an arms race if it adopts the new strategy, since no country singled out in the review – such as Russia, China, and 'rogue nations' Iran and North Korea – are going to ignore the US military beef-up. Those who will suffer the most from this are ordinary people who will have to carry the burden of the defense costs.

"Often these arguments get carried away to the point when one side is up-betting another side, building more and more and the only people that seem be really hurt from this are the people of the countries whose finances are drained," Paul said.

And to consent to such massive spending, people have to be intimidated, the ex-congressman believes – thus, the negative media response to Trump's announced withdrawal from Syria or thawing relations with North Korea.

"As if we've just created WWIII by suggesting they are not going to stay there," Paul said, adding that the military-industrial complex profiteers and pro-war politicians appear to be in control of the propaganda machine. 

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