Biden’s speech on aid for Israel and Ukraine took on national security issues, economic considerations, and moral imperatives.
There was a lot of calculation last Thursday in President Biden’s speech on keeping up American military assistance for Israel and Ukraine. Biden, in about 20 minutes, covered the need for national security, the importance of jobs in the defense industry, and the moral imperative – driven by American exceptionalism – to help beleaguered nations under attack.
To start off, Biden, who came across as capable and steadfast, called up some of the Cold War rhetoric that dominated his generation as it was coming of age.
How’s that?
Well, as Biden (seen above with Ukrainian leader Zelensky in a public domain photo posted in wikimedia commons) put it, support for Ukraine is not just a matter of helping out Ukrainians. Its implications are much broader. Said Biden, “if we walk away and let Putin erase Ukraine’s independence, would-be aggressors around the world would be emboldened to try the same. The risk of conflict and chaos could spread in other parts of the world — in the Indo-Pacific, in the Middle East — especially in the Middle East.”
People of my – and Biden’s – generation have heard that invocation before, except that in those Cold War days it was a more monolithic force, communism, that could “spread in other parts of the world.”
Back then the notion of communism fanning out across the globe was known as “the domino theory” and it successfully drove a post-World War II generation of Americans to build a mighty fortress known as the military-industrial complex, a phrase first invoked by President Eisenhower during his farewell address in 1961.
In context, Ike used the expression as a warning to keep the MIC from becoming a driving force that would influence policy for the sake of benefitting itself. You could argue that Vietnam was the catastrophic culmination of Eisenhower’s dark vision.
But since then, a lot has changed. I don’t think that nurturing the MIC was the consideration for Biden that it was for Eisenhower and the years that immediately followed him.
Defense spending now represents a far smaller share of our Gross Domestic Product than it did back then. During the 1960s, such spending accounted for around 10% of GDP. In 2022 it was just 3.5%.
So, even though the slice is much smaller now than it was then, Biden didn’t hesitate to call attention to the economic force that the armaments industry represents. Biden’s reference to jobs was probably intended to get the attention of those in Congress who are calling for reductions or eliminations of expenditures on arms for Ukraine and Israel.
Said Biden: “And let me be clear about something: We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores — our own stockpiles with new equipment — equipment that defends America and is made in America: Patriot missiles for air defense batteries made in Arizona; artillery shells manufactured in 12 states across the country — in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas; and so much more.”
Besides calling attention to the jobs sustained by the armaments industry and besides raising the spectre of aggressors proliferating if we don’t act now to stop Putin and Hamas, Biden also directed his attention to those who embrace and profess their belief in American exceptionalism. To them he said, “American leadership is what holds the world together . . . American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with.”
In effect the president was saying that our very exceptionalism, expressed as American values, attracts other nations. Referring to Ukrainians, Biden said we are bringing “the promise of America to the people who are today fighting for the same things we fought for 250 years ago: freedom, independence, self-determination.”
Biden’s words are stirring, his case for containing aggression is strong, and the reminder that good American jobs are created by sending U.S.-made armaments overseas is compelling. I think he’ll get the money he’s about to request, and that it will continue to do some good.
John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam.
