Abstract
This book discusses the US defence industry and highlights the mismatch between a new security environment and old policies, structures and military equipment. Gansler argues that in order to address current and future security concerns a major transformation of the US defence industrial base is needed. The author describes in detail how more competition, removal of protectionist clauses, increased use of contractors, greater integration of commercial and military industrial operations, as well as more investments in research and development may allow the US military to take advantage of globalisation and to realise higher performance at lower costs, which would in turn strengthen national security.
The title of the book is based on US President Roosevelt’s 1940 statement, in which he referred to the war production output of the US defence industry as the ‘arsenal of democracy’. The word that features so prominently in the title – democracy – is however almost completely absent from the book itself and the few times it does appear the author does not discuss how precisely the US defence industry contributes to it. Interestingly, democracy has been slowly moving into Gansler’s framing of the US defence industry: it was absent from the titles of his first two books on the topic, then appeared in the subtitle of the third, and now features prominently in the title of the fourth. What makes the book interesting to the non-US-defence expert is precisely this curious presence of the term democracy. While the author devotes much attention to statistics and figures he fails to connect these to the assertion made in the book’s title and to more fundamental questions about the relationship between the defence industry, politics and claims about morality. Also, he remains unclear about whether it is the ‘future security of the world’ (p. xiv) that depends on the transformation of the US national-security industrial base, as asserted in the book’s preface, or whether it is rather ‘U.S. taxpayers and the men and women in the armed services’ and ‘the nation’s future security’ (p. 358) that require the suggested changes.
Among the many other goals that a transformation of the US defence industry is supposed to realise, the book mentions potentially contradictory objectives such as achieving stability, supporting the war on terrorism, defending ‘our way of life’ (p. 92) and strengthening the US economy. Numerous examples can be found that illustrate the author’s strong US-centric standpoint, seemingly unaware of the many negative consequences that the export of ‘democracy’s arsenal’ may have on democracy and security in recipient countries. When discussing foreign military sales, Gansler only briefly notes that ‘congress and political activist groups raise concerns about selling arms to countries that are undemocratic’ (p. 69), but fails to discuss in more depth how close US allies such as Saudi-Arabia might use these weapons both domestically and in neighbouring countries towards goals that clearly contradict democratic ideals. Similarly, when analysing the issue of contractors in combat zones, Gansler describes how many million meals are served and how many million pounds of mail are delivered by subcontracted personnel working in Iraq and Kuwait. He also highlights how costs can be saved by the use of contractors, concluding that contractor activities should become ‘the norm’ (p. 126). Incidences of armed contractors having shot Iraqi civilians are however only mentioned briefly and are attributed to a lack of coordination and ‘the so-called bodyguard mindset’ (p. 124), rather than to deeper ethical problems that arise from outsourcing this type of work. Indeed, when the book discusses moral issues they are limited to adversaries, who Gansler sees as using tactics that are ‘foreign to Western cultures and therefore are unexpected’, such as ‘hiding behind women and children, and tolerating large numbers of collateral deaths’ (both p. 90). When the US defence industry is discussed in terms of the ethical implications of the arms industry, it is not regarding the export to or the use of its weapons in foreign countries, but only regarding fraud and abuse within US defence firms. But even here the reader learns that the many laws and regulations ‘ensure high ethical behavior by industry and by the government itself’, as well as that Lockheed Martin for example ‘employs sixty-five ethics officers, and requires all employees (more than 130,000) to consider ethical issues for at least one hour each year’ (p. 155).
The book illustrates many of the special characteristics of the defence market in a detailed and coherent way. Also, it convincingly highlights the role that institutional resistances, the diversion of attention to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as the large increases in the defence budget in the post 9/11 era played in delaying changes within the US defence industry. However, due to the blunt attempt at constructing moral authority and purpose for the US defence industry, while eschewing serious debate of the political and moral issues and contradictions, I cannot recommend the book, except possibly to those with a highly specific and technocratic interest in the US defence industry. Books lionising the defence industry and ignoring the many serious moral and ethical issues connected to it should probably refrain from making moral claims about democracy, as well as from titles such as ‘Democracy’s Arsenal’.