Under Biden, the military industrial complex reigns supreme.

Don’t expect the Biden administration to do anything but exacerbate US imperialism.

America’s attitude to defence and military intervention has always been utterly ridiculous. When an election came round, Presidents and potential Presidents bragged about what military action they’d take where, and then call the other weak on defence for not increasing the planet destroying arsenal of death fast enough. A sorry state of affairs, and laughable to those of us outside the bubble.

Well, no matter what your reasons for voting Joe Biden this cycle were (among them are preserving any semblance of US democracy, protecting basic human rights, stemming the tide of the rising far right, albeit temporarily), I think we can all agree on one thing: Joe Biden isn’t going to do anything about the military industrial complex.

The military industrial complex is a factual, widely documented thing, it isn’t tinpot QANON for liberals. Anyone who has a basic comprehension of the various interests that “get things done” in Washington know that most politicians are in the pocket of the defense industry to varying extents. This is Democrats and Republicans, and while Republicans have often been more hawkish in recent times, since the rise of Trump the most depraved elements of Neoconservatism have flocked to Joe Biden the “sensible” Democrat.

Various things of late demonstrate why we should worry and should hold Biden to his pledges on these things:

1. We’ve already heard liberals attacking the outgoing Trump administration for NOT BEING HAWKISH ENOUGH, perhaps the scariest thing of late.
2. We know Biden’s record on foreign policy and friendships (and support from) Bush and McCain type neoconservatives, often people who ran the show during the Bush years, an administration even more morally depraved beneath the surface than the Trump administration in many ways, certainly not any better.
3. Biden’s unconditional support for Israel and its actions, and the fact liberal opinion makers are already urging him to ditch the proposed deescalation with Iran.
4. The fact the architects of Russiagate are going to be in the White House, which can’t bode well.
5. Finally, the fact most defense and foreign policy nominees are literally military themselves, have a poor record of doing horrendous things in foreign affairs, or have literally worked for think-tanks of the industrial complex.

The fact remains: domestic chaos will keep Biden from initiating new conflicts or escalations immidiately, but right now he’s listening to Bush-era hawks over Sanders-type doves, even though he won because of the doves. Time will tell, but we see worrying signs and must fight this at every turn, because this administration isn’t our friend on foreign policy, and the battle just begins to craft a vision for a progressive foreign policy ACTUALLY built on peace and human rights, not a facade of the that.