They pretty much already are. That’s why the defense budget is so high already. It’s a money funnel to defense contractors. Almost every aspect of it is just paying contractors. The military doesn’t do a lot outside of just supplying the cannon fodder. The only thing left to do is privatize actual soldiers. But still, there’s be a capitalist needing to make money off them and soldiers are already paid next to nothing as it is.
Think about it this way, instead of funding stuff like F35s, they’ll spend that money on getting Blackwater to hire more goons who can be used to put down food riots.
I can’t imagine Blackwater and other PMCs have the bodies to replace the entire US military, and I’m skeptical that they could realistically recruit a comparable number of bodies that quickly for even less pay without the emergency recruitment tool that only the government has (conscription). Even if Trump did want to reshuffle everybody that’s currently in the military into a the private sector, what that would practically look like is firing them all, giving contracts to the preferred companies, then hoping that the fired people all apply for lower paying jobs at the preferred companies. Even assuming you got 100% of the fired soldiers to voluntarily do that, it’d be a massive, slow, and disruptive transition that would leave the imperial military totally ineffective until after the transition’s complete (if then) while also giving up conscription as a tool to backfill cannon fodder.
When the global capitalist business model depends on keeping a gun pointed at the head of the world, I can’t imagine who seriously considers putting down the gun for a bit and expecting the hostages to wait patiently while the empire takes it apart looking for ways to make a cheaper gun from the parts. I can’t imagine any world leader wouldn’t see even a temporary imperial demilitarization of that scale as the single best opportunity anyone will ever get to drive a stake through Dracula’s heart and act accordingly.
I don’t think there’s any talk of replacing the entire US military though. They just want to reduce Pentagon budget over the coming years, and funnelling that money into stuff like PMCs seems to be an obvious next step. Also, if they’re now realizing that they can’t take on Russia and China then the policy would be to retrench which means they have less global commitments. Europe being dumped is one example of this. I very much agree with the assessment here https://archive.ph/00s4y
They pretty much already are. That’s why the defense budget is so high already. It’s a money funnel to defense contractors. Almost every aspect of it is just paying contractors. The military doesn’t do a lot outside of just supplying the cannon fodder. The only thing left to do is privatize actual soldiers. But still, there’s be a capitalist needing to make money off them and soldiers are already paid next to nothing as it is.
So realistically, this move has me stumped.
I think theyre gonna pivot to PMC model to allow the military of the US to operate in areas as mercenaries without it being a “war”.
US companies could hire PMCs to go secure regions for them and the US govt can be like “Those are private entities that has nothing to do with us”
Think about it this way, instead of funding stuff like F35s, they’ll spend that money on getting Blackwater to hire more goons who can be used to put down food riots.
I can’t imagine Blackwater and other PMCs have the bodies to replace the entire US military, and I’m skeptical that they could realistically recruit a comparable number of bodies that quickly for even less pay without the emergency recruitment tool that only the government has (conscription). Even if Trump did want to reshuffle everybody that’s currently in the military into a the private sector, what that would practically look like is firing them all, giving contracts to the preferred companies, then hoping that the fired people all apply for lower paying jobs at the preferred companies. Even assuming you got 100% of the fired soldiers to voluntarily do that, it’d be a massive, slow, and disruptive transition that would leave the imperial military totally ineffective until after the transition’s complete (if then) while also giving up conscription as a tool to backfill cannon fodder.
When the global capitalist business model depends on keeping a gun pointed at the head of the world, I can’t imagine who seriously considers putting down the gun for a bit and expecting the hostages to wait patiently while the empire takes it apart looking for ways to make a cheaper gun from the parts. I can’t imagine any world leader wouldn’t see even a temporary imperial demilitarization of that scale as the single best opportunity anyone will ever get to drive a stake through Dracula’s heart and act accordingly.
I don’t think there’s any talk of replacing the entire US military though. They just want to reduce Pentagon budget over the coming years, and funnelling that money into stuff like PMCs seems to be an obvious next step. Also, if they’re now realizing that they can’t take on Russia and China then the policy would be to retrench which means they have less global commitments. Europe being dumped is one example of this. I very much agree with the assessment here https://archive.ph/00s4y
I think they’re probably cutting pet projects of the industrialists and reallocating to cyber