Item: Last year Saudi Arabia signed off on a $60 billion package for American fighter jets, missiles, radar warning systems and other equipment.
Item: In the past two months, the Defense Department has notified Congress of possible deals totaling more than $11 billion to Gulf States such as Qatar and Kuwait.
Item: A couple of weeks ago Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina were in town to warn of dire consequences if looming defense (“sequestration”) cuts were to occur. The economic impact would be “devastating,” they said. According to Sen. Graham, MacDill Air Force Base would be “toast.” MacDill’s local economic impact has been estimated at nearly $3 billion annually.
Item: We now know that MacDill could be in for an economic coup if the Pentagon assigns it a fleet of the next generation of aerial refueling tankers. The competition is intense, the lobbying has begun, and MacDill is definitely in the hunt.
Item: The Tampa Bay Defense Alliance is strategizing to make Florida the country’s drone capital. Tampa could benefit economically as the anchor of a high-tech corridor that would include Orlando and Jacksonville.
Item: On Jan. 17, 1961, outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the ominous “influence” of the “military industrial complex” in his farewell address to America. The former general underscored how that influence was “felt in every city, every statehouse and every office of the federal government.” It was something to “guard against.”
But surely he wasn’t envisioning scenarios that would mean jobs and economic security for American communities–just the phobic fear of geopolitics and profits.
Surely.