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1/ Rather than pile on Brands, I’d like to note that many, many Dems share this liberal view of the military and military spending, and that progressives to grapple with the underlying issues. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
2/ it’s important to recognize that what much of what Brands says is true- the military has been a source of social mobility for millions, and military spending does serve an important role in many state and local economies. It’s the latter that we should focus on.
3/ Part of the genius of the blob is that since the 1950s military contracting and production have been, by design, widely dispersed to *literally every* congressional district, making long term reductions in military spending a real jobs issue, not a militarism issue, for many.
4/this helps to explain why calls to reduce military spending gain so little traction in mainstream Dem circles. There is a widespread mainstream consensus that the military serves liberal values, And that military spending serves an important economic function.
5/ In other words that Keynesian militarism is right. We might productively think of the military industrial complex as the United States equivalent of industrial policy in other countries. And ask what might replace its core economic and cultural functions.
6/ developing a serious, coherent Left foreign policy vision requires engaging in, though I know it makes @stephenwertheim and others groan, grand strategic thinking that would make sense of calls to, say, reduce US mil spending by 40%, 50% or more.
7/ it’s also why I think it makes sense to see Green New Deal proposals as an ideological and political-economic foundation for a post hegemonic, progressive foreign policy. And ask what a strategy of conversion away from both fossil fuels *and* militarism would look like.
8/ this requires some hard thinking about what could replace local military spending and militarism more generally as sources of jobs, revenue, and culture for millions. As well as hard thinking about what the “external state” will look like if the US does slash mil spending.
9/ should the US spend equivalent amounts “overseas” on other, presumably progressive priorities (Global public health?). Simply redirect to domestic priorities? What would a progressive foreign policy budget vision look like?
10/ it’s easy to think of the things we want less of: military spending, arms sales and production, intervention. More challenging to imagine a new political and cultural economy of non-militarism that serves some of its same functions. End
