Right now, the military industrial complex is like the liquid terminator at the end of Terminator 2
He gets dumped into a vat of molten steel, and as he is thrashing, trying to get out before he dissolves into just plain steel, he morphs through all the identities he has taken on throughout the story.
So it is with the military industrial complex.
Politicians in Washington seemed so gob-smacked by the collapse of the Soviet Union that they accidentally talked about a "peace dividend" from reduced military spending for a while until the started casting about for new excuses for military action.
They tried humanitarian interventions. The problem was, since it was just a form of charity, once US troops were killed, the public could demand the pullout of the troops and at worst, look uncharitable instead of unpatriotic and cowardly.
They tried the War on Terror. They got a good couple of years out of that before most of the public figured you didn't need a Cold War sized military to chase around stateless terrorists who have no navy, air force, or ability to take and hold territory in the US.
Obama himself has inadvertently put the lie to need for a Cold War-sized military with his use of relatively cheap drones to kill suspected terrorists, and the use of a SEAL team and a couple of helicopters, as well as some old fashioned spying and deception on the ground to kill bin Laden.
Whether or not you agree with what Obama has done, it doesn't add up to needing twice as many aircraft carriers as the rest of the world combined, and bases in countries most Americans don't know exist.
Smelling their own flop sweat, the politicians "pivoted to Asia" to try to reignite the Cold War with Russia and then maybe China.
None of this was really a change in foreign policy, but instead a matter of what shade of lipstick they put on the pig.
It also shows that even the Cold War wasn't so much about ideology, but turf wars over who gets to reap the profits from which place.
Going after an old enemy who gave up the ideology we claimed was the reason for our conflict, just reminds us of the old lie, and how likely the new alarm is a lie too.
But what the hell will they do if the public stops buying what they are selling?
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