Collective on Foreign Affairs
25th. MAY 2022
1. America’s 21st-century wars are a staggering $14 trillion-plus since 2001.
2. One-half of Afghan War expenditure went directly to defense contractors.
3. The Pentagon budget peaked in 2010 at the highest level since World War II — over $800 billion, substantially more than the country spent on its forces at the height of the Korean or Vietnam Wars.
4. The Military Industrial Complex is so entrenched that “A]ny member of Congress who doesn’t vote for the funds we need to defend this country will be looking for a new job after the elections”
5. More than one-third of all contracts go to just five major weapons companies — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. Those five received more than $166 billion in such contracts in fiscal year 2020 alone; Lockheed Martin got US$75B contracts in 2020.
6. Companies benefiting from the buildup of the past 20 years also included logistics and construction firms like Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) and Bechtel, as well as armed private security contractors like Blackwater and Dyncorp.
7. The Congressional Research Service estimates that in FY2020 the spending for contractors of all kinds had grown to $420 billion.
8. Halliburton was the recipient of the Pentagon’s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program contracts. Those open-ended arrangements involved coordinating support functions for troops in the field, including setting up military bases, maintaining equipment, and providing food and laundry services. By 2008, the company had received more than $30 billion for such work.
9. Fraud, waste, and abuse. These included a U.S.-appointed economic task force that spent $43 million constructing a gas station essentially in the middle of nowhere that would never be used, another $150 million on lavish living quarters for U.S. economic advisors, and $3 million for Afghan police patrol boats!
10. A congressional investigation found that a significant portion of $2 billion worth of transportation contracts issued to U.S. and Afghan firms ended up as kickbacks to warlords and police officials or as payments to the Taliban to allow large convoys of trucks to pass through areas they controlled, sometimes as much as $1,500 per truck, or up to half a million dollars for each 300-truck convoy.
11. Another task taken up by private firms Titan and CACI International was the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners. Both companies had interrogators and translators on the ground at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a site where such prisoners were brutally tortured.
12. There were more contractor employees in Iraq and Afghanistan (155,000) than American uniformed military personnel (145,000). In its August 2011 final report, the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan put the figure even higher, stating that “contractors represent more than half of the U.S. presence in the contingency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, at times employing more than a quarter-million people.”
13. About three-quarters of the contractor work force there was made up of people from countries like Nepal or the Philippines, or Iraqi citizens. Poorly paid, at times they received as little as $3,000 per year.
14. Tier 1 Group, which was founded by a former employee of Blackwater — trained four of the Saudi operatives involved in the murder of Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi, an effort funded by the Saudi government.
15. The biggest and most controversial market for U.S. weaponry in recent years has been the Middle East, particularly sales to countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have been involved in a devastating war in Yemen, as well as fueling conflicts elsewhere in the region.
16. Sapura Energy unit said to have awarded offshore oil and gas well construction contract to Halliburton. For undisclosed terms, Halliburton said it secured a six-well offshore well construction contract from Sapura Drilling, a subsidiary of Sapura Energy.
The work is in collaboration with Malaysian state energy company Petronas.
17. Malaysia’s Dialog Group Bhd (DIAL.KL) said it has signed an agreement with Halliburton International Inc (HAL.N) for a contract worth $1.2 billion aimed at boosting oil output from a mature field in East Malaysia. The agreement aims to boost recoverable reserves in the Bayan Field, located offshore Sarawak, as Malaysia tries to boost flagging production from its existing oil fields.
18. On September 23, 2019, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and US President Donald Trump renewed a key defence pact which allows American forces to use Singapore’s air and naval bases, extending it by another 15 years to 2035.
19. The US Navy uses Singapore’s naval facilities for logistics and re-supply, while Singapore uses American airbases and abundant space for ground training.Singapore has 18 AH-64Ds with an average age of 16.7 years.22 Jul 202119. The FTA between the United States and Singapore supports approximately 215,000 American jobs, and their bilateral goods and services trade surpassed $93 billion in 2020
20. Japan, which neighbors China, hosts the maximum number of US military bases/defense facilities. Over 53,000 US troops operate from 120 military bases in the Asian nation. The island of Okinawa alone accounts for 62% of all US bases in Japan and covers 25% of the entire island.
21. Read eurasiantimes: Over 750 Military Bases Across 80 Countries: How US Military Overshadows China In Projecting Power Overseas.
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