America's War on Terror breeds domestic terrorism
After the 9/11 attack, Washington invested enormous efforts and resources in anti-terrorism wars overseas. This took a heavy toll on the domestic economy. Starting from 2001, the U.S. ratcheted up its military spending. The Department of Homeland Security budget, which was $16 billion for the year 2001-2002, peaked at $74 billion for the year 2009-2010. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, America's military spending in 2020, standing at $738 billion, was four times as much as that of China and accounted for 40 percent of the global total.
To tackle terrorist groups overseas, the U.S. has launched regional wars over the past 20 years, including attacks on Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. This has incurred huge losses to both local and American troops. The latest research from Brown University shows that the 20-year war in Afghanistan cost $2.3 trillion. That is equivalent to the spending of $6,949 per American citizen.
In the meantime, America's overseas war on terrorism has deepened the bias of white Americans against the Muslim population. Especially since the global financial crisis sent the U.S. economy on a rapid downturn in 2008, such bias and hostility has escalated to target almost all ethnic minorities, further consolidating the influence of white supremacists. This, at the instigation of far-right forces, has led to serious racial conflicts and social unrests.
The only beneficiary of the wars is probably the military-industrial complex. American defense companies are the leader of the world's arms industry. In 2019, the total sales of the global top five, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics – which are all American – reached a whopping $166 billion. In 2019, 12 American firms were on the list of the top 25 global defense companies, representing 61 percent of global arms sales. Among the $2.3 trillion spent in the war in Afghanistan, around 87 percent went into the pockets of the top five defense contractors.
By funding and lobbying members of Congress, American defense contractors have gained tremendous influence in national policymaking, and, with the help of senators and representatives they have funded, obtained more resources to manufacture weapons. Through infiltration into and influence over academia, Hollywood and the video game industry, the military-industrial complex is able to propagandize at home that it is of necessity to uphold the U.S. hegemony and promote militarism. By doing so, it could keep the war machine running indefinitely to advance the defense industry. The military-industrial complex shrouds American ideologies, politics and culture with a militarist sentiment, creating a fertile ground for the rapid development of far-right terrorism.
America "must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist," then American President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his famous farewell speech in January 1961. Sixty years later, however, the U.S. is turning itself into an imperialist military machine, creating a hot bed for domestic far-right terrorism and sowing the seeds for social division and turmoil.