The Shadow World

2011, Andrew Feinstein

Global military expenditure is estimated to have totalled 1.6tn dollars in 2010, 235 for every person on the planet. This is an increase of 53 per cent since 2000 and accounts for 2.6 per cent of global gross domestic product. Today, the United States spends almost a trillion dollars a year on national security with a defence budget of over 703bn. The trade in conventional arms, both big and small, is worth about $60bn a year...

Within a year of George W. Bush assuming the presidency, over thirty arms industry executives, consultants and lobbyists occupied senior positions in his administration. Half a dozen senior executives from Lockheed Martin alone were given crucial appointments in the Bush government during 2001. By the end of that year the Pentagon had awarded the company one of the biggest military contracts in US history.

Dick Cheney had served George W. Bush’s father as Secretary of Defense before becoming CEO of Halliburton. During his tenure as Vice President under Bush junior, Cheney’s former company garnered over $6bn in contracts from the Department of Defense. Its oil-related contracts in Iraq trebled that number. Cheney still held stock in the company and left office a very wealthy man. Too little has changed under the Obama administration...

But it is not just the contracts. It is also the pernicious influence that this complex has on all aspects of governance, including economic and foreign policy and decisions to go to war. This unease is intensified because a large part of what it does is not open to scrutiny by law makers, the judiciary, the media or civil society watchdogs.

The arms industry and its powerful political friends have forged a parallel political universe that largely insulates itself against the influence or judgement of others by invoking national security. This is the shadow world.