• Quimby [any, any]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Technically this is true, but it's obviously splitting hairs / disingenuous.

    Weapons manufacturers don't typically encourage or discourage the US to begin or continue specific military action. They do, of course, facilitate military action and reassure the US that if they do decide to fight, they will win. And they reinforce generally hawkish policy in order to continue the flow of arms sales, which is what they do care about.

    So, for example, they don't tell SecDef "you need to deploy troops to Afghanistan now!" They just spend three decades telling the DoD that "Afghanistan is a threat and a problem and the DoD needs to have a ready supply of weaponry so that they are prepared to fight / continue fighting in Afghanistan, which we'll definitely need to do."

    Edit: Actually, this isn't even technically true. I just understand what they're trying to say / what they would follow up by saying. I've spent way too long in the corporate world :ohnoes:

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Weapons manufacturers don’t typically encourage or discourage the US to begin or continue specific military action

      Wasn't the CEO of Raytheon a member of some NGO that hyped counter-revolution in Cuba a few months back?

      • panopticon [comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        Yes they do, for example look at the sponsors page of Australian hawk thinktank ASPI: https://www.aspi.org.au/sponsors

        Includes Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, NAVAL Group, Raytheon, SAAB... And was first founded in 2001 with seed funding from the Australian DoD.

        ASPI produces and promotes national propaganda against designated enemies like China. So it's literally not even technically true that these arms dealers don't promote war. They don't even try to hide it.