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1556Assessment of the evolution of weapons exports in broad outline. The example selected is the most structured and the most significant, as well as the most radical. The US holds center stage, with the JSF and its global reach, but with an unexpected dimension – an ideological one.
An assumption which we deem to be highly probable is that the JSF program would have been dropped, reduced or modified beyond recognition, if the attack of 11 September 2001 had never occurred. The day before, 10 September, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had given an astoundingly powerful talk, which we provided an analysis of for our readers; as may be imagined, any reports of this talk were lost in the media frenzy generated by the drama of the following day. (For the analysis of Rumsfeld’s talk, see Context No. 49, TO THE POINT, and our website dedefensa.org, Analyse, dated 11 September 2002.)
Rumsfeld developed the idea that America was facing a danger greater than any it had ever known, even at the height of the Cold War against the USSR. The new danger was the threat of proliferation of the Washington bureaucracy, the Pentagon bureaucracy in particular, which by its power and its unwieldiness, was paralyzing the decisional process and blocking Pentagon reform. The talk – which today takes on an extraordinary irony when one thinks of the events of the following day – portended a clear (albeit thinly-veiled) approach, one of whose effects – through the attack on the bureaucracy and on its programs that he was announcing – would surely have been to put the JSF under the gun in one way or the other.
The events of 9/11 changed everything. They produced a radical politicization in all areas of activity in the US. Defense was in the front line, especially the advanced technology aspect. This was even more true in the case of a system with global aspirations like the JSF, which in and of itself represented a defense export strategy – if not the only conceivable defense export strategy – for the United States. Today, there is a post-9/11 JSF which differs fundamentally from the JSF before that day of infamy.
One of the American reactions to the attack of 11 September was one characterized by an aggressive national reaffirmation. The JSF and the export strategy that it represents, as matters have developed, now constitute the embodiment of the defense export aspect of America’s aggressive national reaffirmation. The JSF has become an arm for establishing a new American order which the 9/11 attack has now made imperative.
The US approach is now unilateralist, globalizing and totally integrative. It is not a strategy, nor a conspiracy, but rather an extreme trend which is a natural evolution of American power. We shall not speak of an American export offensive, but of an American vision of the world which America feels it needs to impose. The JSF is the most advanced and the most characteristic example of this philosophical construct.
Americans reacted to the events of 9/11 in a complex way involving two complementary convictions: there was the deep conviction of their national power and the perception of international relations as embodied in the maxim that might makes right; at the same time, there was the feeling of urgency, if not panic, because of an apocalyptic perception of 9/11. On the basis of these attitudes, the Americans are proposing – deciding would be more accurate – that a totally integrated, global system must be developed and implemented. In the area of interest to us, that system is one that we know well: the JSF.
This new American concept stands the traditional concept of defense exports on its head. (We examine defense exports, but the concept is one that is applicable to any field of activity; the defense industry is what it is, however, i.e. the guardian of the nation’s sovereignty, with all the preeminence and cruciality that implies.) The American posture is marked by extreme, highly unusual attitudes:
• The Americans have reversed the customary order of commercial transactions in defense exports. Until now, potential markets were first identified, then developed. Now, the Americans develop their product, their structures and the various relevant projections; once all these parameters constituting an overall structure dominated by them are in place, the Americans order the market to fall in line. Pete Aldridge, third-ranking official in the Pentagon, tells us how the bureaucracy evaluates the JSF’s export production potential and the aircraft’s unit cost: “It could be as much as 3,000 if you take the high end of the expectation. I just don’t know how many that’s going to be because nobody’s committed to it, and we’re talking about the year 2020. For cost estimating purposes, for affordability purposes, we’re using around 3,000 airplanes and that’s where our unit cost is derived from.”
• Similarly, the Americans don’t look for customers as much as they designate those who will be in a position to buy the JSF, and the hierarchy of potential buyers is obviously made on the basis of a range of criteria, not the least being the prospective client-country’s level of access to classified information (the UK being at the top of the heap in that respect).
Not surprisingly, this unusual attitude matches America’s diplomatic activity since 11 September. America determines who is with it and who is against it, by identifying the outcasts (those to whom no part of the JSF is offered), or the “Rogue States” (the main one being France, a country that is offering the Rafale, an aircraft that could be seen as a competitor to the JSF and which, in addition, was rated almost on an equal footing by the Netherlands – 6.95 versus 6.97).
More than being a question of marketing defense exports, we are confronted with an integrated package deal, and one presented on an urgent, peremptory basis at that. What we have is an effort to organize defense export sales somewhat along the lines of the reorganization of the world generally post-9/11. An implicit separation is suggested between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, and it is by no means sure that we won’t soon find ourselves confronted with an ‘axis of evil’ of buyers and an ‘axis of evil’ of competitors.
This approach cannot be politically neutral, and the line followed is that of the Administration’s most radical fringe. Just as the conquest of Iraq must impose a brand of democracy worthy of the ‘good’ and compatible with American interests (the two being synonymous), integration into the JSF program will have the same destructuralizing effects for the activities involved.
Lockheed Martin (LM) has assumed the lead role for the system. LM has a long tradition of international wheeling and dealing, primarily through its Lockheed component specialized in the export of the F-104 (a notorious Lockheed corruption scandal earned the company a degree of public ignominy in 1975-76). Two illustrations confirm this interpretation:
• On 4 October, Vance Coffman, CEO of LM, announced to the AECMA that integration of the trans-Atlantic aerospace industry was proceeding apace; that it would take place under the watchful eye of LM; and that European industry was instantly invited to fall into line without grumbling. (See Context No. 57 of November 2002. See also, our website dedefensa.org, Analyse, dated 26 October 2002.)
• The central role played by certain influence-peddling LM officers. We have in mind, in particular, former US Army intelligence officer Bruce P. Jackson, who joined Martin-Marietta in 1993 (the year prior to its 1994 merger with Lockheed). He rapidly rose to the post of Vice-President for Strategy & Marketing, a key post that he still holds (or one that he stepped down from last August, depending upon the source and version of events). Jackson lobbied for NATO enlargement. He is active in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), the body that inspired the foreign policy platform for the Bush candidacy, and chairs the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI). These are ideological organizations controlled by neo conservatives like Perle and Kristoll. Jackson is not a simple yeasayer: his doctrinal activity is very significant; he writes think pieces with Robert Kagan, William Kristoll and others. Jackson is not only an activist; he is an ideologue as well. And his position within LM, where all his talents are used to advantage, says much about the conglomerate’s own ideological commitment.
This enterprise acquires naturally, with no preconceived plan – without being part of any conspiracy – the dimensions and characteristics of an ideological war machine. The activity is that of the imperialistic, radical right, currently on the rise in the US. Business is no loner business, and the military-industrial complex (MIC) has refound the ideological aspirations of its origins of the years 1935-38, when Professor Millikan – the famous physicist (Nobel Prize winner in 1923) and President of CalTech starting in 1935 – saw in the scientific-political grouping around the aviation industry in California (the original MIC) “the westernmost outpost of the Nordic civilization”.
The Americans are not concocting a conspiracy, nor are they laying Machiavellian plots. They are following a tendency that they now come by naturally – if not obsessionally: it is a tendency that they do not feel it necessary to explain; nor do they acknowledge it. No, they impose it as their “imperial” right against the rest of the world. Defense export projects and programs developed on the basis of this approach – with the JSF as the focal point – are destined, inevitably and very rapidly, to run headlong into the foreign policy principles of the rest of the world, starting with Europe. This means that today, a painful dilemma is soon to envelope Europe.
The Europeans will be obliged to tackle the problem of defense exports from the political vantage point in order to match the activity on the American side. They will do so or they will cease to exist as an industrial, technological force to be reckoned with in the field of armaments, with as a result the loss of any possibility for Europe to assert its autonomy and its independence, as well as the loss for the nations concerned of their ability to formulate and implement their own foreign and security policy. If the Europeans want to continue to exist, they must take political measures, even if some of those measures are not quite according to Hoyle. (Some of these measures would only duplicate measures already adopted by the US; as in the case of the US, the Europeans will have to rationalize certain contradictions in their commercial situation under the expedient of the political argument.) It will be as much a matter of protecting their markets as a matter of instituting a “European preference” for the choice of equipment. Extreme events require extreme choices.
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