A Permanent War Economy Is Democracy's Enemy, Not Its Arsenal
Deepening society's reliance on military Keynesianism will not save America but rather accelerate US decline
This is not about the US decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine—a weapon banned by most of the world for its cruel and unusual potential to harm civilians.
But that announcement triggered a controversy about building a wartime economy that deserves some attention, because it sharpens a fundamental choice about who we want to be and how many people we should be willing to sacrifice for our process of becoming.
The interesting aspect of the cluster munitions conversation is not really about Ukraine or battlefield effectiveness. While I’m dispositionally opposed to cluster munitions, I’m very open to an argument about cluster-munitions usage if it’s part of a theory of least-harm. The context, after all, is an ongoing war. There isn’t one, of course, but I’m open to the argument.
The interesting question is also not about whether we want to flout international law. Yes, the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) is an international treaty, and yes, it looks really bad to claim to be a defender of the “rules-based” order while once again flouting one of the rules of international order. But—and this should hardly be surprising—the US is not a party to the CCM.
Zooming out, the big-picture problem attached to this announcement is what I glibly observed here:
According to both US strategy documents and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, the compass guiding US foreign policy is supposed to be whether it helps the American middle class. You can quibble with the virtues of that aspirational principle, but it’s how the Biden administration justifies everything it does.
Or at least that’s what the administration says.
A number of prominent commentators and politicians—including some progressives—have concluded that America’s ammunition shortage in Ukraine validates their belief that America must rebuild an economy centered on manufacturing. And not just any manufacturing. Defense-industrial manufacturing.
This is unrealistic, but it’s also an abandonment of America’s great experiment with democracy while intending the opposite.
Let me explain.