If anyone thinks that wars should be fought for profit, it’s not our generals. It’s Trump.
Trump sympathizers on both the left and right suggested that Trump was making a brilliant allusion to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, which warned “against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex.” Trump, in turn, retweeted those explanations.
But the analogy doesn’t make much sense. Eisenhower, one of our greatest generals, wasn’t warning that generals would start wars to sell weapons. He was warning that, under pressure from the Pentagon and defense contractors, Congress would spend more than we needed on defense while neglecting domestic priorities. A deficit hawk, Ike cut defense spending by 27 percent.
Trump, by contrast, brags about all the money he has showered on the military (he’s increased defense spending by 29 percent) and has expressed no concern about a ballooning budget deficit. (“Who the hell cares about the budget?” he said in January.) He even appointed a Raytheon executive as secretary of defense, succeeding an acting secretary who was a Boeing executive. If Trump is genuinely worried about the military-industrial complex, he has a funny way of showing it.
Trump is not echoing Eisenhower’s warnings about the dangers of excessive defense spending. He’s channeling interwar isolationists who argued that the only reason the United States became embroiled in wars was because of business interests. Smedley D. Butler — a Marine general and two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor — caused a sensation with a 1935 book called “War Is a Racket.” A veteran of the Banana Wars in the Caribbean, Butler claimed: “I spent most of my time as a high-class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”
His charge that America’s wars are fought for Wall Street has been cited ever since by critics of the United States — including communist regimes — even though it was at best a gross oversimplification. There were many reasons besides economic interests for the U.S. interventions in Latin America. The most interventionist president of all, Woodrow Wilson, was the one most devoted to spreading democracy.
In a similar vein, many on both left and right insisted that “the merchants of death” — i.e., weapons manufacturers — had been responsible for America’s entry into World War I. This was the title of a 1934 book, and it was the subject of hearings in 1934-1936 led by arch-isolationist Sen. Gerald Nye (R-N.D.). The Nye Committee failed to prove its case. But it did lead to the passage of the neutrality acts, which made it harder for President Franklin D. Roosevelt to aid the victims of fascist aggression.
So, in a way, it makes sense that Trump — whose foreign-policy slogan “America First” is borrowed from prewar isolationists — also echoes their aspersions against generals. But the charge is a bizarre one coming from this archcapitalist. If anyone thinks that wars should be fought for profit, it’s not our generals. It’s Trump. He sees our troops as mercenaries for hire and is aggrieved that our allies aren’t paying enough for their services.
Former national security adviser John Bolton explained that Trump’s $5 billion price tag for keeping U.S. troops in South Korea followed the “cost plus 50 percent” principle of property developers. When Trump sent troops to defend Saudi Arabia last year, he bragged that the kingdom would pay “100 percent of the cost,” and he cited an inflated estimate of arms purchases as an excuse not to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for the murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. And when Trump abandoned the Syrian Kurds last year, he defended himself by saying: “We’re keeping the oil. . . . We left troops behind, only for the oil.”
If the generals really were starting wars for profit, Trump would be the first to congratulate them on their business acumen. Instead, he thinks they are suckers, the Atlantic reported, precisely because “there’s no money in serving the nation.”
Trump is no Eisenhower. He’s not even Smedley Butler. He’s just a sad excuse for a commander in chief who, when attacked, lashes out using any argument that pops into his head, no matter how offensive or nonsensical. He can always count on his fans to transform his ignorant insults into a stroke of world-historical genius.
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