The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home

A corrupt military-industrial complex peddles shoddy weapons that can’t win wars but still wreak havoc around the world, according to this coruscating exposé. Political scientists Hartung (Prophets of War) and Freeman explore the symbiosis of the Pentagon with the handful of defense contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin that gobble up much of the Defense Department’s $1 trillion budget to build weapons. Along the way, the authors spotlight industry lobbyists who ply congressmen with campaign donations in exchange for approval of weapons contracts; think tanks that extol new weapons with undisclosed funding from the contractors who produce them; and even Hollywood, which gets warplanes as props in exchange for Pentagon script approval. The result of all this enmeshment, the authors contend, is weaponry that’s overpriced and underwhelming, like the Navy’s rickety littoral combat ship and the $2 trillion F-35 fighter-bomber, widely considered a boondoggle. Such poor performing armaments, the authors assert, end up sold to authoritarian regimes or in the hands of overly militarized American police forces; meanwhile, the U.S. defense budget swells out of proportion to domestic spending. Especially incisive is the authors’ close look at the “revolving door” that whisks generals, congressmen, and Pentagon procurement officials who approve lavish contracts into cushy jobs with those same contractors. It’s a damning indictment of the conflicts of interest running rampant in the defense establishment. (Nov.)