National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism

by Melvin A. Goodman

"Mel Goodman has spent the last few decades telling us what's gone wrong with American intelligence and the American military, and now, in National Insecurity, he tells us what we must do to change the way the system works, and how to fix it. Goodman is not only telling us how to save wasted billions--he is also telling us how to save ourselves." -- Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker
Upon leaving the White House in 1961, President Eisenhower famously warned Americans about the dangers of a "military industrial complex," and was clearly worried about the destabilizing effects of a national economy based on outsized investments in military spending. As more and more Americans fall into poverty and the global economy spirals downward, the United States is spending more on the military than ever before. What are the consequences and what can be done?


Melvin A. Goodman, a twenty-four-year veteran of the CIA, brings peerless authority to his argument that US military spending is indeed making Americans poorer and less secure while undermining our political standing in the world. Drawing from his firsthand experience with war planners and intelligence strategists, Goodman offers an insider's critique of the US military economy from President's Eisenhower's farewell warning to Barack Obama's expansion of the military's power. He outlines a much needed vision for how to alter our military policy, practices, and spending in order to better position the United States globally and enhance prosperity and security at home.


Melvin A. Goodman is the Director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy. A former professor of international security at the National War College and an intelligence adviser to strategic disarmament talks in the 1970s, he is the author of several books, including the critically acclaimed The Failure of Intelligence.

Genres: Nonfiction, War, Politics, History, Military Fiction

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2013

Reviews

[Smiley III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melvin A. Goodman's tract offers the sort of insight only an insider, and sort-of de facto apostate, can bring: shorn of ideological flag-waving, left to the (still-)necessary work of getting a real bead on where trends are headed, taking us, and, potentially, alterable, this book will make for uneasy reading for those (Left or Right) used to easy-to-swallow polemics. Everybody's gotta eat, after all ... why wouldn't the Defense Industry look after their own? (Yikes!)

The somewhat-repetitious phraseology and points-made are, as textual redundancies, well worth disregarding in light of the scope taken, and expressed, for the Reader's benefit: one almost feels the whole weight of the datum beggars simple digestion, and Goodman is to be saluted for a necessary reading contribution to Our Lifting Ourselves Out of Cluelessness. Next step ... to be taken!

[Guy Coffee]

Excellent. Awesome amount of money being spent on defence and much is being squadely.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

En ocasiones, con mas frecuencia de la que me gustaria admitir me da la impresion de que el resto del planeta (y no yo) esta en un viaje interminable inducido por el acido lisergico: como nadie o casi nadie cuestiona, por ejemplo, que la guerra tal vez no sea la salida? Aca Melvin Goodman me reconcilio, aunque sea temporalmente, con mi equilibrio mental: habla, bastante mas claramente que yo, sobre algunos asuntos que ya me habian parecido evidentes.

El libro navega por unas cuantas premisas: una de las fundamentales, es la asercion de que el gasto militar gringo, lejos de beneficiar a los EEUU, los perjudica: anios de operaciones encubiertas, derrocamiento de gobernantes, en algunas ocasiones elegidos democraticamente (el Congo, Chile), ocupaciones, uso del aparato militar como arma de politica exterior, lejos de haber hecho al planeta mas seguro, lo han vuelto mas violento e inestable. Menciona ejemplos de como acciones gringas en apariencia exitosas (por ejemplo, la primera ocupacion de Irak, que en menos de 100 horas derroto a Hussein) a la larga han sido perjudiciales (la primera ocupacion fue la semilla para la segunda, que tan desastrosa ha resultado) para el planeta en general y han beneficiado solo a un punado de companias de la industria de "defensa".

Habla bastante Goodman de como gobernantes de EEUU han desoido (y lo siguen haciendo) la advertencia de Eisenhower sobre el aparato militar-industrial (que Goodman llama militar-industrial-congresal); de como la influencia del Pentagono en decisiones civiles es cada vez mayor; de como, a traves de la influencia y los medios, es ya practicamente antipatriotico hablar de una reduccion del gasto militar. Menciona tambien como EEUU perdio la oportunidad, despues de la guerra fria, de contribuir a desarmar al planeta y de reducir la influencia del Pentagono.

Da casi con la misma vara a Bush padre e hijo, a Clinton, a Obama por no hacer frente al crecimiento de la influencia militar. Expone por que es absurdo que EEUU siga en la carrera armamentista con un presupuesto militar que es mas grande que el del resto de todos los paises del planeta combinados (basicamente, no hay ningun pais del planeta que pueda darle talla a EEUU). Critica fuertemente la renuencia gringa al desarme nuclear (solo dos paises, Rusia y China, poseen armas nucleares de largo alcance capaces de llegar a los EEUU continentales).

Un par de criticas al libro: me gustaria haber visto mas cifras (un par de cuadros no me hubieran molestado para nada). Y cuando habla como, por ejemplo, inicialmente Dick Cheney, ex vice presidente gringo, no era necesariamente pro militarista y se transforma despues de haber sido CEO de Halliburton no explica por que el cambio con detalles que son necesarios.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

The actual content was smart and authoritative. I subtract one star for the following. (And there were about five similar, close but no cigar fact-checking errors). On P 250, there is a reference to Oliver Stone's Wall Street, which has Gordon Gekko and Bud Fox. Except in trying to make an artful analogy, he writes Thomas Wolfe's Wall Street. Wrong on a few counts. Tom Wolfe not Thomas, and Bonfire of the Vanities is the Wall Street-themed book. But wrong anyway. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But seriously, otherwise this book had elements of Rachel Maddow's Drift and Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes, CIA history, which all make the case that the American Military needs to trim down. The warnings from Eisenhower about the military industrial (congressional!) complex were particularly striking. Should read.

[City Lights Booksellers & Publishers]

"Mel Goodman has spent the last few decades telling us what's gone wrong with American intelligence and the American military, and now, in National Insecurity, he tells us what we must do to change the way the system works, and how to fix it. Goodman is not only telling us how to save wasted billions—he is also telling us how to save ourselves." -- Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker

[David Melbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eisenhower was prophetic, and Goodman also shows how we have failed to learn from our past mistakes.

[Juan Carlos]

Concise.