We Need to Prioritize Security Needs

By JASON SIBERT

There’s one thing that the two major political parties can agree on in our country – that we shouldn’t take a serious look at our security needs.

Just a few days after President Joe Biden ended the Afghanistan war, more than a dozen Democrats with strong ties to the defense establishment voted to add nearly $24 billion to the defense budget for fiscal year 2022, as 14 Democrats joined 28 Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee to adopt an amendment from Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., to the fiscal year 2022 defense authorization bill that would boost Biden’s $715 billion spending proposal to $738.9 billion. The move follows the Senate Armed Services Committee’s vote to similarly raise the top line to more than $740 billion in its July markup of the bill.

The 14 House Democrats to support the defense spending were Reps. Jim Langevin of Rhode Island; Joe Courtney of Connecticut; Jared Golden of Maine; Elaine Luria of Virginia; Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey; Stephanie Murphy of Florida; Anthony Brown of Maryland; Filemon Vela of Texas; Seth Moulton of Massachusetts; Salud Carbajal of California; Elissa Slotkin of Michigan; Kai Kahele of Hawaii; Marc Veasey of Texas; and Steven Horsford of Nevada.

The mentioned Democrats districts are home to job-promoting manufacturing sites and military bases, and much of the extra funding will go directly to projects at those locations. Many of the Democrats have also received generous campaign donations from contractors. Federal Election Commission data shows that in the first six months of this year, the 14 Democrats collectively received at least $135,000 from political action committees representing the country’s top 10 defense vendors: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, L3Harris, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Leidos, Honeywell, and Booz Allen Hamilton.

The economic security of our country should be a part of its overall security, and these Democrats have gone on the record when it comes to this issue. Some of the 14 Democrats who defied Biden to vote for greater defense spending have also tried to blow up their party’s efforts to achieve the president’s domestic policy goals — most notably, Medicare expansion, paid family leave, an extension of the child tax credit, and billions of dollars for clean energy and other climate initiatives.

The greenhouse effect, or climate change, also represents a part of the security puzzle, but its not taken as seriously as military spending (designed for a security situation where we fight a ground war with the defunct Soviet Russia in Europe) because it doesn’t have the financial pull of a Lockheed Martin or a Raytheon.

While drawing down greenhouse gas emissions is important, adapting to climate change is also important. The greenhouse effect means more extreme weather events, and our country isn’t prepared. Writer Alice Hill gives us an overview in her story “The United States isn’t Ready for the New Phase of Climate Change: Washington Needs a National Adaption Strategy.”

Hill points out that recent extreme weather events demonstrated that in urban areas homes, roads, utilities, communication systems, and other essential facilities across the country are not built for the extremes of today, much less the catastrophes of tomorrow.  Hill recommends a national adaptation strategy that identifies the United States’ major vulnerabilities, lays out its shared priorities, and incorporates climate risk into every level of public decision-making. We’ve witnessed a devastating year of climate extremes with ice storms overwhelming Texas’ power grid, a heatwave in Portland, Oregon, as the city had to shut down its public transportation system because it wasn’t designed for the 116-degree heat. The same month, extreme heat in Washington State caused asphalt and concrete roadways to buckle, and in Alaska, which is warming nearly twice as fast as the rest of the globe, higher temperatures have begun to thaw permafrost—once perennially frozen land. This is causing infrastructure to sag and sink.

Hurricane Ida dumped more than three inches of rain in New York City over the course of an hour. Much of it landed in the city’s sewer system, which was designed to handle a maximum of 1.75 inches of rainfall per hour. Widespread flooding ensued, damaging homes and businesses and leaving 46 people dead across four states. 

The Biden administration’s $1 trillion dollar infrastructure bill is a start when it comes to these problems. Policymakers should make climate change a top priority in their decisions. Communities will need to think where they build. Owners and operators of infrastructure will need to account for potential climatic shifts over the 50- to 100-year lifespan of any given structure.

Hill calls for a climate adaption commission that would map the road for an adaption strategy. The commission would make vulnerability assessments that would guide state and local authorities. Federal leaders could prioritize investments like building a seawall along the Atlantic to block storms.

There’s much work to be done. However, currently, we’re still preparing for a defunct Soviet threat. We won’t go very far until we really understand security.

Jason Sibert is executive director of the Peace Economy Project in St. Louis. Email jasonsibert@hotmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2021

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