(summary-no opinion stated)
Everyone who has spent more than five minutes perusing the data on U.S. military contracts understands that the big bucks are still to be made in the production of high-tech, cutting-edge, whiz-bang weapons platforms of the sort that enriched several generations of contractors during the Cold War. But – damn it! – the Cold War had the impudence to dry up and blow away back in the early 1990s, seemingly never to return. Of course, the contractors could always direct their wiles and their lobbying budgets toward reminding members of Congress that we never know when another Big Bad Enemy will pop up. For a while China was the favorite emerging threat to serve up at defense-industry banquets and military-association get-togethers. Yet, coming up with a truly convincing replacement for the USSR proved to be an extraordinarily difficult task. China appeared to be more interested in supplying Wal-Mart and bankrolling the U.S. Treasury than in attacking the United States .
The onset of the war in Iraq diverted the defense-industry boys from their usual fun and games, but only slightly. Although KBR, Blackwater, Dyncorp, Bechtel, Fluor, Triple Canopy, and many others have made a killing in Iraq, the truly humongous proceeds in military contracting continue to be made by bending metal for aircraft, ships, missiles, satellites, and combat vehicles and by supplying the countless related items of software, maintenance, remodeling, upgrading, training, and so forth that can keep one of these big projects going strong for decades in a sole-source, competition-free environment with limitless potential for engineering change orders – “contract nourishment,” as it’s known in the trade. (The B-52 project, for example, has been going strong for more than 60 years and has no end in sight. If you are a U.S. taxpayer, the Boeing Company says thank you very much.)
The Russians have not been very cooperative about reviving the Cold War. Not that they’ve demonstrated themselves to be Mr. Nice Guys, especially in Chechnya, but in their relations with the West, they’ve shown more interest in soliciting foreign investment, exporting oil and gas, and purchasing mansions in Cyprus than in nuking London and Washington. It’s true – and a fact that bears more repeating – that they still possess thousands of nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them accurately anywhere on earth within the next hour. But since the USSR ‘s demise, they have not been talking menacingly enough to maintain the Russian threat as a terribly serious fear in the minds of American taxpayers.
Which brings us back to the little nation-state known as Georgia .
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=02d5d515-ef7c-4edc-b328-10b13ab76e01)