The US Congress has just approved a defense budget for the year 2026 just over a year away. 900 billion dollars. This dizzying figure, which multiplies President Trump’s health care budget by 10 times – in the days of Samson, when donkey jaws served as a deadly weapon, war cost much less – deserves detailed analysis from countless angles. But let the reader not worry, I do not intend to draw your attention to a few questions which seem to me to be of general interest.
To begin with, it is surprising that this figure was approved by almost 75% of members of Congress in a chamber divided almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans. And this despite the fact that it includes 400 million dollars per year in military aid to Ukrainea relatively modest amount but which calls into question the erratic policy of Trump who, on odd days and two weekends of each month, prefers to blame the war on kyiv.
What more can we say about the budget that has just been approved? Which, at the current exchange rate, represents a figure very close to the 800,000 million euros that the European Commission has put on the table – but only in the form of debt for the countries that want to assume it – for the rearmament of Europe… but this, in our case, will have to be enough to cover our needs until 2030.
What rearmament of Europe? — a clueless reader might ask. In case of doubt, I speak of this rearmament which, partly thanks to Spain, is no longer called that. And no, the reasons why our government and others in the EU want to fudge the names of things are not lost on me. This way, they don’t have to justify them to voters. However, mystifications come at a price: divert public opinion and they give ground to anyone who wants to manipulate us.
It is inevitable that lack of information will give way to misinformation. Perhaps this is why the voices of disarmament are being heard again in our country. The convinced, who must be respected – there are those who truly believe in turning the other cheek – and the mercenaries, at the service of those who, from within or without, seek to take advantage of the naivety of others. Thus, in the press and in debate forums, the old question returns: who benefits from this disproportionate spending on weapons? To the defense industry, of course. And from there to blaming Boeing or Lockheed Martin for what is happening in Ukraine, there is only one step. A dubious approach – it is easy to identify the motive, but not the opportunity – but particularly tempting because it almost exonerates us as a species. It is no longer Putin, a human being like us, who is responsible for the war which agitates our consciences, but something more distant, a impersonal conglomerate of obscure interests with which it is more difficult for us to identify.
“All Wars” — one of the participants in an informal conference I gave a few days ago in Barcelona told me with great conviction — “they are caused by the thirst for profits of the North American military-industrial complex.” Perhaps the best answer to this assertion, born in Vietnam but even more common today than the reader imagines, lies in one question: When exactly should we believe that the nature of war changed?
Jane Goodall, the primatologist who died two months ago, documented a bloody war between chimpanzees in the Gombe jungle on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, which she attributes to the power struggle of three very aggressive males… none of whom even knew America existed. We, the human cousins of these apes, were also unaware of this until very recently and have never stopped committing suicide over it. The North American military-industrial complex itself He was born only in the 50s of the last centurya few years after the only two world wars which bear this name and several others, also of global scope, which we only know in another way because no one thought of calling them that.
All the wars – those before, those today, and that of Jums, the dominant elephant of Cabárceno Park who has just died in a brutal fight against his own son – they fight for power. Yes, it’s true that since we don’t have big fangs, human beings use the weapons we make for them. But it’s also true that most of those that have been used in real conflicts around the world aren’t even North American. From the AK-47, the ubiquitous Soviet assault rifle, around 80 million units. It is impossible to quantify the deaths caused by these guns, but we must not forget that, when they are not available, machetes or kitchen knives also work. Even the jaws of a donkey, if we stick to the letter of the Book of Judges.
And since we have come to Samson’s feat, I find it hard to believe that the biblical leader, using one of these jaws as a weapon, could kill a thousand Philistines. Perhaps the donkeys of yesteryear were not like the donkeys of today, but it seems more reasonable to me to frame the story within a campaign of what we now call disinformation, intended to project an image of the invincibility of the Jewish people. Putin does the same thing every day from the Kremlineven if he prefers to talk about nuclear weapons.
However, if what happened about Samson were true, there would surely be those who, following the same reasoning as modern conspirators, should hold the donkeys responsible for this massacre. What I don’t really know is if it would be appropriate blame quadrupeds or bipeds.
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