Sanford Gottleib, a worker in the political peace movement, told about 20 people yesterday afternoon that America needs to stop spending so much money on the defense industry and look outside the military sphere to create new jobs and opportunities for Americans.
Speaking in the Rockefeller Center, Gottleib, a member of the Class of 1946, said he finds no excuse for the U.S. government's current annual defense expenditures, which exceed $266 billion.
His speech touched on the themes discussed in his recent book titled "Defense Addiction: Can America Kick the Habit?"
Gottleib said the U.S. government spent more than $300 billion a year on defense during the peak of the Cold War, and though "some version of a Cold War was unavoidable ... but, I do not believe it needed to be carried to the extremes it was carried to."
"During the Cold War, the motivation for spending was 80 percent fear of Communism and 20 percent pork," he said, defining "pork" as jobs and profits for those in the defense industry.
"Now, the percentages have been reversed," Gottleib said. "Twenty percent is fear of whatever has replaced Communism and 80 percent is pork."
With the Cold War ended, Gottleib said he sees no need for the U.S. to continue spending so much money on defense, since the U.S. faces no direct foreign threat.
The only thing the U.S. is protecting now is its image of global supremacy, he said.
But Gottleib said he believes that more than 40 years of the Cold War made Americans "addicted" to matters of defense.
The country has become so accustomed to worrying about protecting itself that it does not know how to stop, he said.
Gottleib suggested ignoring the defense industry and looking outside it for places to create new jobs as a method to cure the addiction to defense.
Gottleib proposed a three part solution to the problem of defense addiction.
First, he said, he encourages public investments in infrastructure and transportation improvements to create more jobs in the civil labor force.
Second, Gottleib said, civilian research and development projects should move from military to commercial areas.
Third, there should be better education and training programs to prepare people of all educational backgrounds for the civilian jobs that exist today.
Gottleib said additional ways to decrease the role of the defense in society are by shifting government spending from the military to the civilian sphere and increasing civilian participation in government.
As collaboration among civilians increases, so will their productivity and effectiveness as a group, he said.
Gottleib's audience, which conspicuously lacked students, had mixed reactions to his speech. During the question-and-answer period following the speech, some expressed concern that Gottleib's solution was too idealistic.
A member of the audience was dubious about how much power the American citizen has to make a difference in government, when all the spending is controlled by corporations.
Gottleib said while citizens cannot individually influence the corporations, they can influence their political representatives through collaboration and lobbying.
While there were no students in the audience, Gottleib said he wanted more young people to develop an interest in the subject of defense spending in the future.
Gottleib previously worked for the Center for Defense Information and produced their weekly documentary, "America's Defense Monitor."
Gottleib received his Ph.D. from the University of Paris.
