“Most Americans apply a yardstick to America’s actions which is very different than the yardstick they apply to Russia’s actions. Whenever their bias in favor of their own nation gets into conflict with the truth, the odds are that the bias will prevail. As a result of this they are not capable of seeing current events in their historical perspective…In Washington, wisdom has no chance to prevail at this point…If we intend to drop bombs on Russia in case of war, and expect Russia to drop bombs on us…then our threat to drop bombs on Russia is tantamount to murder and suicide.” Leo Szilard: “Are We On The Road To War? (1961)
The US defense secretary, Ashton Carter, is the face of all that is wrong in Washington, DC. But he is “Mr. Right” for the varied capital interests and ideologies he represents: the fusion of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism; state sponsored corporate welfare; the revolving door; opportunism and greed; the “freemarket”; and a science and technology that is first and foremost in the service of weapons and war.
Carter has absolutely nothing in common with the rank and file of the military (those at the tip-of-the spear) who he ostensibly is supposed to represent. He would never go out beyond-the-wire.
“Ash” is a one percent guy, representing the one or so percent that moves and shakes the classes that make up society like the puppeteer does marionettes. Carter’s primary interest is in further privatizing, and eliminating, the State’s role in national security for the purpose of providing more profit opportunities for defense contractors, weapons research laboratories and his bank account. Even his two marriages seem arranged for political/economic purposes: his ex-wife, and 1977 college graduate, is president of Bates College in Maine; and the current Mrs., a 1991 college graduate, is a partner in ABS Capital.
The honorable US defense secretary studied physics, receiving his PhD from Oxford. His specialty was quantum chromodynamics, a field of study in which two of the giants of 20th Century physics, Nobel Laureates Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann, set the pace. Perhaps figuring he’d not make the Nobel Prize cut or had reached the end of his shelf life in the physics research community, Carter opted to pursue the profitable path of science and technology in the service of weapons and war, and the individuals and organizations that design strategies and technologies that require that America remain in a perpetual state of war of some kind.