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Who Profits?
Last week two giant war corporations,
Raytheon and United Technologies, announced they would merge in early 2020. The new behemoth, to be known as Raytheon Technologies, is expected to have
a combined value of over $100 billion in capitalist markets. Recent history provides context to understand today's war industry and the nature of this merger.
The nineteen-nineties witnessed a lot of mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. war industry. Some of the bigger moves were
Boeing merging with McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed acquiring Martin Marietta, and Raytheon gobbling up Hughes Aircraft. These moves occurred in parallel to another phenomenon: Home and abroad, the
Pentagon effectively doubled down on the corporatization of military functions. Jobs that once were carried out by the troops (e.g. mowing the lawn, serving chow, logistics, eavesdropping on governments, transportation, combat) were increasingly in the private domain,
up for grabs to the shrewdest corporation.
The Clinton White House, a country club of neoliberal ideology, was fully onboard. It encouraged the corporatization of the War Department. This aligned well with President Clinton's other accomplishments in office:
attacking sovereign nations (e.g. expanding sanctions against Iran's oil sector in 1995, and launching industry ordnance at Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq, and Sudan);
brutalizing the destitute, working poor, and caged (via the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act, the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act, the 1996 Personal Responsibility & Work Opportunity Act, and the 1994 Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act); and
aiding corporate greed (by passing NAFTA and the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act and boosting spending on war). One of Clinton's most damaging achievements, the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, complemented these activities by deregulating the telecoms and allowing cross-ownership in corporate media, clogging the information space with info-tainment and permitting corporate ideology to further dominate our perception of the world around us.
Support for neoliberal economic polices, including the corporatization of war, is one of many traits that both parties in the D.C. regime share.
Comment: Saad Nimr, professor of political science at Birzeit University disagreed telling RT: Hanan Ashrawi, a member of PLO executive council and a negotiator, said economic measures will not solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Only a political solution will work.