This paper, co-written by Bill Hartung, author, expert on the arms industry and U.S. military budget, and senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute, and Corporate Accountability, delves into the influence that weapons-makers have on the ongoing expansion of the U.S. military budget. It also focuses on how people can take action together to rein in the arms corporations by following in the footsteps of Corporate Accountability’s successful campaign challenging General Electric to get out of the nuclear weapons making business.
You’ll learn how influence, power, and conflicts of interest converge, creating a poisonous concoction of military projects for the U.S. that perpetuate violence and war all around the world, and are paid for by our tax dollars. While the magnitude of military contractors might seem insurmountable, we include effective strategies from the campaigning archives of Corporate Accountability where our corporate campaigning in the 90s—the boycott of General Electric—helped secure the end of the manufacturing of nuclear weapons parts by the corporation.
This piece is part of a series on the challenging the military industrial complex. Check out the first installment, “The problem with the military budget” to learn about what the $886 billion in military spending gets us — and how we can shift these dollars toward programs and resources that actually keep us safe.
