Sá mikilsvirti blaðamaður Simon Jenkins skrifar afar umhugsunarverða grein í Guardian. Jenkins leggur út af frægri ræðu sem flutt var af Eisenhower Bandaríkjaforseta þar sem hann varaði við ítökum hers og hergagnaframleiðenda. Það eru engir stórir óvinir í sjónmáli, en samt er haldið áfram að ausa peningum í hermál. Þetta er kerfi sem viðheldur sjálfu sér, það þarf að finna óvini ef þannig ber undir. Þeir sem ekki taka þátt í leiknum eru aumingjar, líkt og skilja mátti á ræðu sem Robert Gates, varnarmálaráðherra Bandaríkjanna hélt um daginn. Þar skammaði hann Evrópuríki fyrir að eyða ekki nægu fé í hermál:

Jenkins skrifar:

„It is not democracy that keeps western nations at war, but armies and the interests now massed behind them. The greatest speech about modern defence was made in 1961 by the US president Eisenhower. He was no leftwinger, but a former general and conservative Republican. Looking back over his time in office, his farewell message to America was a simple warning against the „disastrous rise of misplaced power“ of a military-industrial complex with „unwarranted influence on government“. A burgeoning defence establishment, backed by large corporate interests, would one day employ so many people as to corrupt the political system. (His original draft even referred to a „military-industrial-congressional complex“.) This lobby, said Eisenhower, could become so huge as to „endanger our liberties and democratic processes“.

I wonder what Eisenhower would make of today’s US, with a military grown from 3.5 million people to 5 million. The western nations face less of a threat to their integrity and security than ever in history, yet their defence industries cry for ever more money and ever more things to do. The cold war strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically: „Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented.“

The devil makes work for idle hands, especially if they are well financed. Britain’s former special envoy to Kabul, Sherard Cowper-Coles, echoed Kennan last week in claiming that the army’s keenness to fight in Helmand was self-interested. „It’s use them or lose them, Sherard,“ he was told by the then chief of the general staff, Sir Richard Dannatt. Cowper-Coles has now gone off to work for an arms manufacturer.

There is no strategic defence justification for the US spending 5.5% of its gross domestic product on defence or Britain 2.5%, or for the Nato „target“ of 2%.“