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Defense Spending in a Democracy Lev Navrozov I am not going to speak of the full financial costs of the Iraq War. Since (1) even a slave doing unskilled work in ancient Rome or in the United States before the Civil War cost quite a sum of money because it is not easy to raise a baby to an age of a minimum ability to work, and since (2) the cost of restoring war-ravaged Iraq is mind-boggling, the lowest estimate for the financial costs of the Iraq War runs into trillions of dollars. I will cite only U.S. taxpayer expenses for the Iraq War according to congressional appropriations. As of June 9, 11:30 p.m., the figure on the Yahoo! site was blinking at $292 billion. I omit millions of dollars because as I stared at the figure, it blinked forward by a couple million dollars – the taxpayer cost of the Iraq War within those seconds that I stared at the figure. The Iraq War, that is, a war against a midget or rather its Sunni guerrillas, has been geostrategically inane or insane, in view of the fact that a giant, the dictatorship of China, on the same continent, has been developing post-nuclear, or "assassin's mace," weapons. But few tried to stop or reduce the expenses of the Iraq War – certainly so when the Coalition's "brilliant victory" was celebrated more than three years ago. Everyone understood the conventional war and its weapons. Armor and aircraft had to be used in the Iraq War, right? My God! Tanks and airplanes had been used already in World War I! The volunteer soldiers have to be paid salaries, just as are civilian employees, and as for their maintenance, surely it should be worthy of heroes risking their lives. But a different case emerged in 1938. Otto Hahn, a German chemist, split the uranium atom in 1938. A report on the discovery and its meaning appeared in the British magazine Nature. Moreover, Niels Bohr, a great Danish physicist, had brought the news to a conference in Washington, D.C., even before the Nature issue was out. So the most important geostrategic discovery since the invention of gunpowder (in China!) floated out of Nazi Germany and became public knowledge, in particular in Washington, D.C. Did the U.S. administration start the development of the "atom bomb"? No! The priceless years –1939, 1940, 1941, and part of 1942 – were lost. Had not Hitler launched in 1939 a conventional aggressive war but had invested the money instead in his nuclear project, the world, including the United States, would have become his satrapy, populated by those "inferior people" who should be happy if he permitted them to stay alive and not exterminate them as he exterminated Jews in Germany. It was only in September 1942 that Brigadier General Leslie Groves was put in charge of the U.S. atom bomb project ("Manhattan Project"), but in his memoir published in 1962 he writes that his "initial reaction [even in September 1942!] was one of extreme [!] disappointment." Of course! While his colleagues were put in charge of tanks and bombers, good powerful weapons, he was put in charge of some incomprehensible abstractions made of invisible particles called "atoms." Story Continues Below
After 1945, nuclear physics began to appear in school textbooks. But before 1945 it was as mysterious as, for example, molecular nanotechnology in 1986. On March 16, 1939, a letter was sent by émigrés (oh, those Jewish émigrés, disturbing important officials!) to the Navy, requesting an appointment with Enrico Fermi (not a Jew but a Gentile from Italy!) to explain the viability of the atom bomb. The meeting accomplished nothing. Unlike his colleagues involved in the nuclear project in Germany and unlike his American-born colleagues in the United States, the Jewish émigré Leo Szilard was convinced that the "atom bomb" was drawing nigh, and the only question was which side would obtain it first. With the Jewish émigré Eugene Wigner, he persuaded Albert Einstein, whom they had known in Berlin, to appeal directly to President Roosevelt. On August 2, 1939, Einstein's letter went to Roosevelt. In it, Einstein explained why he believed that Germany was developing nuclear weapons. No response followed. Possibly, Roosevelt had heard of Albert Einstein no more than George W. Bush has heard of Eric Drexler (the founder of nanotechnology). The émigré s then found a White House insider, an "unofficial presidential adviser," Alexander Sachs, who persuaded Roosevelt to take notice of Einstein's letter (two months after its receipt!). In impeccable bureaucratic style, Roosevelt set up a three-man committee to look into the matter, and over the next eight months a grand total of $6,000 ($778 a month) was made available for the development of the weapon that was to decide the destiny of the world. However, Hitler declared war on the United States in 1941, the émigrés continued to make a fuss, and in September 1942 – that is, three years after Einstein's letter – Brigadier General Groves was put in charge of what was called the Manhattan Project, but, as I said above, Groves considered his new post to be insignificant. Well, if President Roosevelt or Brigadier General Groves could not understand the danger of nuclear weapons in the hands of Hitler at war with the United States, why should the present-day U.S. political-military establishment be expected to understand the danger of post-nuclear superweapons in the hands of the power holders of China, who are generally assumed in the West to be good guys bent on Sino-Western trade? Even after Putin's Russia had become an ally of China, no "Manhattan Project" was contemplated in the United States to develop a post-nuclear weapon – a weapon called "assassin's mace" by the dictators of China. Some generalizations are in place. For a dictator, the decision to develop a new superweapon is his personal whim, promising him, if ever so remotely, world domination. Fortunately, Hitler's personal decision was conventional war, and not the development of nuclear weapons: He did not have money for both. In a democracy, its government and legislature must be sure that the new superweapon is 100 percent viable and worth the investment its developers ask for. But how can the government and legislature know whether the new superweapon is 100 percent viable? Also, why should they believe that China is developing this new superweapon and will use it to annihilate the West unless it surrenders conditionally? Here in front of me is a book from my library, by K. Eric Drexler: "Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation," published in 1992. More than 500 pages of mathematics and diagrams. Who (Karl Rove?) can vouch to the U.S. president or to the U.S. Congress that this is a work of genius, of the Einstein of nanotechnology, and not the ravings of a madman? The result? Over $293 billion of U.S. congressional appropriations for those tanks and bombers in the Iraq War and trillions of dollars as its overall financial costs. But not a cent to Drexler and his Foresight Nanotech Institute! As for China, all of Drexler's books and articles are on the Chinese Internet – in English, with Chinese extrapolations. The "supreme leaders" of China are willing to take the risk of the game in which the winner takes our planet and the loser loses, say, $292 billion to $1 trillion. You can e-mail me at navlev@cloud9.net Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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