Military-economic fascism: how business corrupts government, and vice versa.

• Author: Higgs, Robert
• Position: Etceteras ...

The business of buying weapons that takes place in the Pentagon is a corrupt business--ethically and morally corrupt from top to bottom. The process is dominated by advocacy, with few, if any, checks and balances. Most people in power like this system of doing business and do not want it changed.

--Colonel James G. Burton, The Pentagon Wars

In countries such as the United States, whose economies are commonly, though inaccurately, described as "capitalist" or "free market," war and preparation for war systematically corrupt both parties in the state-private transactions by which the government obtains the bulk of its military goods and services. On one side, business interests seek to bend the state's decisions in their favor by corrupting official decision makers with outright and de facto bribes. The outright bribes include cash, gifts in kind, loans, entertainment, transportation, lodging, prostitutes' services, inside information about personal investment opportunities, overly generous speaking fees, and promises of future employment or consulting patronage for officials or their family members. The de facto bribes include campaign contributions (sometimes legal, sometimes illegal), sponsorship of political fund-raising events, and donations to charities or other causes favored by the relevant government officials. Reports of this sort of corruption appear from time to time in the press under the rubric of "military scandal" (see, for example, Biddle 1985; Wines 1989; Hinds 1992; "National Briefing" 2003; Colarusso 2004; Pasztor and Karp 2004; Calbreath and Kammer 2005; Wood 2005; Babcock 2006; "Defense Contractor Guilty in Bribe Case" 2006; Ross 2006; "5 Americans Indicted" 2007; "Feinstein Quits Committee" 2007; and Levesque 2007). On the other, much more important side, the state corrupts businesspeople by effectively turning them into co-conspirators in and beneficiaries of its most fundamental activity--plundering the general public.

Participants in the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC) are routinely blamed for mismanagement; frequently accused of waste, fraud, and abuse; and from time to time indicted for criminal offenses (Higgs 1988, 1990, xx-xxiii, 2004; Fitzgerald 1989; Kovacic 1990a, 1990b). All of these unsavory actions, however, are typically viewed as "aberrations"--misfeasances to be rectified or malfeasances to be punished while retaining the basic system of state-private cooperation in the production of military goods and services (for an explicit example of the "aberration" claim, see Fitzgerald 1989, 197-98). I maintain, in contrast, that these offenses and even more serious ones are not simply unfortunate blemishes on a basically sound arrangement, but surface expressions of a thoroughgoing, intrinsic rottenness in the entire setup.

It is regrettable in any event for people to suffer under the weight of a state and its military apparatus, but the present arrangement--a system of military-economic fascism as instantiated in the United States by the MICC--is worse than full-fledged military-economic socialism. In the latter, people are oppressed by being taxed, conscripted, and regimented, but they are not co-opted and corrupted by joining forces with their rapacious rulers; a clear line separates them from the predators on the "dark side." In the former, however, the line becomes blurred, and a substantial number of people actively hop back and forth across it: advisory committees, such as the Defense Science Board and the Defense Policy Board, (1) and university administrators meet regularly with Pentagon officials (see Borger 2003 for a report of an especially remarkable meeting). The revolving door spins furiously: according to a September 2002 report, "[t]hirty-two major Bush appointees are former executives, consultants, or major shareholders of top weapons contractors" (Ciarrocca 2002; see also Stubbing 1986, 90, 96; Kotz 1988, 230; Doward 2003; Hamburger 2003; Barlett and Steele 2007), and a much greater number cross the line at lower levels.

Moreover, military-economic fascism, by empowering and enriching wealthy, intelligent, and influential members of the public, removes them from the ranks of potential opponents and resisters of the state and thereby helps to perpetuate the state's existence and its intrinsic exploitation of people outside the precinct of the state and its major supporters. Thus, it simultaneously strengthens the state and weakens civil society, even as it creates the illusion of a vibrant private sector patriotically engaged in supplying goods and services to the heroic military establishment (the Boeing Company's slickly produced television ads, among others, splendidly illustrate this propagandistically encouraged illusion).

Garden-Variety Military-Economic Corruption of Government Officials

We need not dwell long on the logic of garden-variety military-economic corruption. As pots of honey attract flies, so pots of money attract thieves and con artists. No organization has more money at its disposal than the U.S. government, which attracts thieves and con artists at least in full proportion to its control of wealth. Unscrupulous private parties who desire to gain a slice of the government's booty converge on the morally dismal swamp known as Washington, D.C., and take whatever actions are necessary to divert a portion of the loot into their own hands. Anyone who expects honor among thieves will be sorely disappointed by the details of these sordid activities.

Although headlines alone cannot convey the resplendently lurid details, they can suggest the sorts of putrid sloughs that drain into the swamp:

* Audit Cites Pentagon Contractors [for widespread abuse of overhead charges]

* Ex-Unisys Official Admits Paying Bribes to Get Pentagon Contracts

* Top Republican on a House Panel Is Charged with Accepting Bribes

* Washington: Ex-Pentagon Officials Sentenced [for taking monetary bribes and accepting prostitutes' services paid for by contractors]

* Revolving Door Leads to Jail: Former Acquisition Official Convicted of Steering Business to Boeing for Personal Gain

* Northrop Papers Indicate Coverup: Documents from '80s Show Accounting Irregularities Were Hidden from Pentagon

* Contractor "Knew How to Grease the Wheels": ADCS Founder Spent Years Cultivating Political Contacts

* Graft Lurks within Pentagon's "Black Budget": Top-Secret Items Escape Oversight

* Contractor Pleads Guilty to Corruption: Probe Extends Beyond Bribes to Congressman

* Defense Contractor Guilty in Bribe Case

* From Cash to Yachts: Congressman's Bribe Menu; Court Documents Show Randall "Duke" Cunningham Set Bribery Rates

* 5 Americans Indicted in Iraq Bid Probe: 3 Officers among Those Accused of Taking Cash, Gifts Tied to Projects

* Feinstein Quits Committee under War-Profiteer Cloud; Report Documents Military Contracts for Firms Owned by Senator's Husband

* There's No Watchdog for Secret Budgets (2)

Anyone who cares to accumulate all such news articles may look forward to full employment for the rest of his life.

Notwithstanding the many culprits who are caught in the act, one must realistically assume that a far greater number get away scot-free. As Ernest Fitzgerald, an extraordinarily knowledgeable authority with almost fifty years of relevant personal experience, has observed, the entire system of military procurement is pervaded by dishonesty: "Government officials, from the majestic office of the president to the lowest, sleaziest procurement office, lie routinely and with impunity in defense of the system," and "the combination of loose procurement rules and government acquiescence in rip-offs leaves many a crook untouched" (1989, 312, 290).

Among the instructive cases now making their way through the justice system are several related to recently convicted congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham, a war hero and former titan of the MICC who currently resides in a federal penitentiary. Chief among the persons of interest in a continuing FBI investigation is Brent Wilkes, a D.C. highflier who is alleged to have been involved tangentially in events leading to the recent sacking of former congressman and Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss. According to a May 7, 2006, report in the New York Daily News, ongoing FBI and CIA investigations of Kyle (Dusty) Foggo--formerly the third-ranking official at the CIA, who resigned in May 2006 amid a variety of allegations--

have focused on the Watergate poker parties thrown by defense contractor Brent Wilkes, a high-school buddy of Foggo's, that were attended by disgraced former Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham and other lawmakers. Foggo has claimed he went to the parties "just for poker" amid allegations that Wilkes, a top GOP fund-raiser and a member of the $100,000 "Pioneers" of Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, provided prostitutes, limos and hotel suites to Cunningham. Cunningham is serving an eight-year sentence after pleading to taking $2.4 million in bribes to steer defense contracts to cronies. Wilkes hosted regular parties for 15 years at the Watergate and Westin Grand Hotels for lawmakers and lobbyists. Intelligence sources said Goss has denied attending the parties as CIA director, but that left open whether he may have attended as a Republican congressman from Florida who was head of the House Intelligence Committee. (Sisk 2006) In your mind, multiply this squalid little scenario by one thousand, and you will begin to gain a vision of what goes on in the MICC's higher reaches. The daily routine there is evidently not all wailing and gnashing of teeth over how to defend the country against Osama bin Laden and his horde of murderous, terrorist maniacs--our country's leaders require frequent periods of rest and recreation.

Legal Corruption of Government Officials

The truly big bucks, of course, need not be compromised in the least by this sweaty species of fraud and workaday corruption (Kovacic 1990a...