Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace [Paperback]

William Greider (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1999

William Greider, one of Americas most respected political and economic journalists, explores how and why America has avoided coming to terms with the end of the Cold War eraand the troubling consequences for our fighting forces and our country. America possesses target overkill in staggering dimensions. Each year the new Department of Defense budget projects that next year or in subsequent years the financial squeeze will be magically resolved by increased spending. The military establishment marches forward to meet itself in financial crises. And the fundamental question remains unanswered: in a time of general peace, how much military power is enough? With vivid reportage, revealing anecdotes, and illuminating interviews, William Greider propels us into an engrossing debate about the addictive budget fixing and reprehensible expansion of our already bloated armed forces.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"The U.S. military-industrial complex, as we have known it, is in the process of devouring itself, literally and tangibly. The awesome interlocking structure of armed forces, industrial interests, and political alliances that has sprawled across American public life and purpose for two generations cannot endure for long," writes Rolling Stone correspondent William Greider in the introduction to Fortress America. Although shorter than his previous books on the Federal Reserve and the global economy, Fortress America is vintage Greider: strong reporting and sharp analysis on a topic of current and compelling interest. Greider doesn't address U.S. defense strategy so much as the perverse economics underlying the American military establishment. Costs and commitments forever escalate as basic military readiness deteriorates. The Pentagon continues to request next-generation fighter aircraft and Congress agrees to fund them even as fundamental training exercises go wanting. The problem isn't that the United States will lose its next war, but that massive waste and incredible redundancy make national defense a pricey behemoth. Greider calls for a fundamental reordering of priorities; this is an argument Washington--and, increasingly, the public--cannot ignore. --John J. Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Expanded from his three-part series in Rolling Stone (for which Greider is national editor), this important critique calls for rethinking America's global military strategy and substantially scaling back the size of our armed forces. According to the author, despite the Soviet Union's dissolution, the U.S. military?unchecked by a complacent public?remains committed to maintaining its enormous scale and structure inherited from the Cold War. Greider's eye-opening report underscores the massive redundancies of weapons systems and casts doubt on the alleged economic benefits of defense spending, as more and more U.S. weapons manufacturers move production and jobs overseas. Despite huge domestic layoffs and a wave of mergers and consolidations in the U.S. military-industrial complex, American taxpayers, he contends, bear the burden for astronomical overpricing, government subsidies, defense plants lying idle with overcapacity and hundreds of millions of dollars in federal "reimbursements" that Clinton and the Pentagon allowed defense contractors to collect against projected future savings, a reward for restructuring. The U.S. spends $260 billion every year on defense, both Democrats and Republicans project hefty increases, and the Clinton team aggressively pushes weapons sales to Central Europe, Latin America and other Third World nations. Greider (Who Will Tell the People) contends that this lays the groundwork for future conflicts. He further argues that the globalizing economy offers the U.S. a historic opportunity to build a world around economic equity, social inclusion and human rights, instead of supporting repressive regimes such as China and Indonesia. He finds support in three very different voices?conservative Republican Arizona senator John McCain, former Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart and ex-Reaganite political scientist Michael Vlahos?all of whom favor military cutbacks and an end to America's role as imperial policeman. Agent, Janklow & Nesbit.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; New edition edition (December 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891620452
• ISBN-13: 978-1891620454
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,041,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Greider is the bestselling author of five previous books, including One World, Ready or Not (on the global economy), Who Will Tell the People (on American politics), and Secrets of the Temple (on the Federal Reserve). A reporter for forty years, he has written for The Washington Post and Rolling Stone and has been an on-air correspondent for six Frontline documentaries on PBS. Currently the national affairs correspondent for The Nation, he lives in Washington, D.C.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly lnsightful Expose of Our Military Conundrum!, July 4, 2000

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace (Hardcover)

As a recent refugee from a career spent as a civilian `foot soldier' in the midst of the military's war against itself that Greider describes in this book, it is interesting and surprising that someone so singularly uninvolved with this country's long-term weapon acquisition system can catch so precisely the malady that confronts us. Greider's analysis captures the horns on which the dilemma is caught quite well, although I must admit to being disappointed to notice he downplays the way in which rampant military careerism plays into this disastrous recent history of misappropriation and wasting of billions of dollars in military funding.

Officers are so intent on practicing self-advancement that they confuse personal success with accomplishing the mission. Thus, when forced to decide between making difficult decisions regarding allowing troubled acquisition programs to proceed, they invariably choose to paper over the problems so as to substantially enhance their own chances of getting promoted and moved to their next assignment before the deck of cards fall for their successor. The sucessor must then ask the contractor to help him rebuild the deck of cards, which means the military inevitably become ethically and legally compromised fellow-travelers in the nonperformance and endless technical shortcomings the contractor incurs. In short, they lose thier effective management by unwitting or unethical collusion with contractors who deliberately underbid for contracts knowing they will never have to produce a contract meeting the stated competitive requirements because of the insidious and self-defeating corruption within the professional military acquisition corps.

Also, Greider's take on the way in which short-term tactical thinking is endangering the long-term force readiness is illuminating. The truth of the matter is that one does much better assuming the reasons we buy certain weapon systems in various numbers has more to do with Congressional prerogatives and rampant corruption than it does with any sort of objective force structure analysis. Contractors bypass the military by influencing Congressional representatives and their staffers. Thus, even if a military program manager does attempt to steer the straight and narrow course by trying to force the contractor to conform to contract requirements, he often finds himself outgunned and outmaneuvered by Contractors influencing his superiors and other federal officials.

Another way in which the current crisis manifests itself is through the militarization of civil service responsibilities, under which hundreds of thousands of Department of Defense civilians (most citizens do not realize that over ninety percent of all federal downsizing since 1990 has been accomplished within the several services comprising the DOD) have been laid off or forced out in favor of contracting the work out to contractors (read retiring military officers here) who will conform to do the bidding of their military employers without ever raising the kinds of knowing and informed ethical and legal objections a professionally-trained civilian acquisition corps does.

Since it is certainly a commonplace observation that military preparedness and internal corruption are historically found to be an endemic problem for peacetime professional military forces in all industrial deomocracies, there may in fect be no useful way to constrain the negative influence careerism has on our country's force readiness. But there is much we can do to limit the negative influence the military has on weapon system acquisition and wiser use of federal tax dollars in support of national defense policy. We must remove the exclusive program management prerogative we have given them in favor of enpowering a resurgent professional civilian acquisition corps. Yet Greider's analysis is a start in the right direction in terms of initiating a more vigorous national debate regarding how that money is allocated and subsequently obligated and spent by the several branches of the military. I recommend this book to anyone interested in how those several trillion dollars are spent over the next ten years.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Important book for Americans to read., March 30, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace (Hardcover)

As I write this, we are at war in the Balkans. The cost of air strikes and further military actions there will all have to come from extra billions of our tax money--the Pentagon budget already goes to the gigantic weapon systems that Grieder's book pictures so effectively. The U.S. public has little awareness of how our Cold War level defense budgets robs our society of social programs such as good schools and health care. "Fortress America" is a rare inside look at how a handful of corporations keep their stranglehold on our society in peace as well as war.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BREAK THE IRON TRIANGLE, July 3, 2000

By 

STEVEN B. MCCRARY (LEIGHTON, AL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace (Paperback)

Congress must be made to know that this vast military spendingmust be hewn down. The current "defense" spending is notabout making us a secure nation but about keeping the corporate welfare hogs...LockMartin, Northrop-Grumman, Boeing, Raytheon, and others pacified and happy. Mr. Greider shows us the overall picture of this collision of corporate-military-legislative arena in FORTRESS AMERICA. Is there anyone else out there who feels that $300 billion dollars can be spent somewhere else?