Saturday, 23 November 2024

On the Imperative to Spend on People Not War. $8 TRILLION War Spending (FY2001-FY2022)


American political commentator Dan Kovalik has asserted that the Biden Administration wants to increase tensions and conflict in the region to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from settling the Ukraine conflict.

On Sunday, it has been reported that the Biden administration has granted Kiev’s request for permission to conduct long-range strikes on Russian territory with US-supplied ballistic missiles.

“The result of all of this could, of course, be catastrophic, for it could lead to the use of nuclear weapons and a major world conflagration,” said Kovalik, author and human and labor rights lawyer.

He added:

“But with someone like Trump, it is hard to say what he really wants or what he will do.  He promised to stop the endless wars, the American people voted for this, and the American people must hold him to that promise.  For the sake of the world, we can only hope that Trump will act in a responsible way to prevent nuclear war.”

In September 2024, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs said that the U.S. federal government has spent and obligated over $8 trillion on the post-9/11 wars.

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In May 2024, CNBC reported that U.S. defense spending and military aid costs are adding up. President Joe Biden signed a $95 billion U.S. military aid package in April 2024, allocating funding to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region.

“The trillions of dollars the US has spent on wars in recent years, and continues to spend, could be used to meet human needs — to eradicate hunger, diseases and poverty.  That’s what makes such spending so tragic and immoral,” Kovalik said.

He sees that the best way to convince US administrations to stop spending more billions of dollars on wars is through  building a peace movement that can pressure the government to spend money on people rather than war.  We have had such peace movements in the past and we must rebuilt such a movement now.  In truth, we must become ungovernable till this end is reached.”

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Daniel Kovalik graduated from Columbia University School of Law in 1993. He then served as in-house counsel for the United Steelworkers, AFL-CIO (USW) until 2019. 

Mr. Kovalik received the David W. Mills Mentoring Fellowship from Stanford University School of Law and was the recipient of the Project Censored Award for his article exposing the unprecedented killing of trade unionists in Colombia.

He has written extensively on the issue of international human rights and U.S. foreign policy for the Huffington Post and Counterpunch and has lectured throughout the world on these subjects. He is the author of several books including The Plot To Overthrow Venezuela, How The US Is Orchestrating a Coup for Oil, which includes a Foreword by Oliver Stone.

Daniel can be reached at [email protected]. 

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