The Lead

What Wages of All This War?

by Paul Gallagher (EIRNS) — Apr. 21, 2024

April 21, 2024 (EIRNS)—The United States government has gone all out for war. The State Department vetoed a UN Security Council resolution for the State of Palestine’s admission to the UN, although 140 nations recognize Palestine as a state—the United States did this to back Israel’s war to depopulate Palestine. The Congress, meanwhile, voted to issue another $100 billion in U.S. federal debt to provide more weapons of war to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. And it reauthorized the surveillance, without a warrant, of Americans who communicate with foreign contacts. Why with no warrant, no Fourth Amendment? Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said, to that question on Fox News Sunday, “We’re at war! They’re coming to kill us all!”

The media resound with praise for Congress showing “responsible bipartisanship” for war, war, and more spending for war. Billionaires who fund the election of these bipartisan warmongers are happy.

But what will America and its people get for equipping and funding constant war? Arizona Republican Paul Gosar, one of those in the House of Representatives who voted “No,” put it this way: “I’m angry that Congress and Joe Biden don’t hesitate to find another $60 billion for a corrupt country but are unbothered that inflation is 19% higher since Biden took office, gasoline is hovering around $4 a gallon nationwide, 11 million illegal aliens have poured into our country, interest rates for a home mortgage are 8%, our roads and bridges are in disrepair, our national debt is $34 trillion, real wages are in decline.…”

The United States can’t build up federal debt this way without causing inflation and higher interest rates worldwide; the IMF just admitted it. It’s causing development loans and aid to be cut to the poorest nations, poverty to increase, and millions to emigrate looking for underpaid work in Europe and America. It’s making it harder and harder for the Treasury to fund U.S. debt, which appears out of control. All this to wage wars killing hundreds of thousands, threatening world war, seeking to “ruin” the rising BRICS group of industrializing nations.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said that all this latest war funding “stays here.” He meant that it includes huge outlays to the big weapons producers like Raytheon, Boeing, etc. But as the April 21 editorial in the EIR Daily News asks, “What stays here” when the war budget is $1 trillion/year and the annual budget deficit, all in, is over $2 trillion?

All that debt stays right here, on Wall Street, where speculators buy it for derivatives bets that threaten to blow it up. War itself stays here, in mass shootings which make the gruesome news every day. Austerity stays here, against economic infrastructure, schools and hospitals.

But we should think, not just of the ills we have, but of the blessing that we miss. If the United States joined in great projects to bring fresh water, power, transportation, housing and healthcare into underdeveloped nations it could bring peace through development. This is the principle represented by the Schiller Institute’s “Oasis Plan” for the Southwest Asia region.

This video has highlights of the Schiller Institute’s “Oasis Plan” conference on April 13, where support for the plan began to grow from diplomatic representatives of a handful of nations.

These are our allies when we lead for peace through development.

From that would come good will, good jobs building the capital goods for the development projects we invest in, and the joy of doing good.