The Corporate War Machine

Pentagon Welfare: The Corporate Campaign for NATO Expansion

by William D. Hartung

While the mainstream media has been preoccupied with the issue of White House affairs at the expense of foreign affairs, the largest U.S. military contractors have been aggressively promoting a scheme that could cost U.S. taxpayers up to $250 billion between now and the year 2010: NATO expansion.

While Lockheed Martin and Boeing did not dream up the idea, they have been among its most enthusiastic supporters, and for good reason: enlarging NATO could pave the way for the creation of a huge new subsidized outlet for U.S. weaponry, including $8 billion to $10 billion in sales of fighter planes and a total weapons market of $35 billion over the next decade. MORE >>

Fields of Nightmares: The Not-Yet Eliminated Global Landmine Industry

by E.J. Hogendoorn

The December 1997 signing of the Landmine Treaty marked a major step in the campaign to eradicate landmines, but not a final victory. More than 120 countries signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (the Ottawa Treaty), including 33 former producer states.

The International Campaign to Ban Landminies has succeeded through aggressive campaigning that highlights the tragic consequences of the use of anti-personnel (AP) mines. Every 22 minutes someone is injured, maimed or killed in a landmine incident -- more than 26,000 people each year. Most of the victims are civilians, often women and children, and nearly all these incidents occur after fighting has ended in the area where the mines were laid. AP mines ensure war damage continues after the fighting is over in other ways, as well. AP mines slow reconstruction, prevent resettlement and divert the scarce resources of post-conflict societies to landmine clearance, which the U.N. estimates costs between $300 and $1,000 per mine cleared.

But production of AP mines has been a big business -- one many producers are reluctant to abandon. Nineteen current or former producer countries refused to sign the Ottawa Treaty. MORE >>

Guarding the Multinationals: DSL and the International Private "Security" Business

by Pratap Chatterjee

On a Tuesday morning in late June last year, Alan Golacinski and Michael Golovatov joined Jacksonville, Florida Mayor John Delaney at the dedication of a new building in the city's "international tradeport." Golacinski is president of U.S. Defense Systems, a private company that provides security for U.S. embassies, especially in African countries. Golovatov is the director of a Moscow-based company known as Alpha-A which provides security for businesses transporting goods across the former Soviet Union. MORE >>

Living Downstream

An interview with Sandra Steingraber

Ecologist, poet and cancer survivor, Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized expert on the environmental links to cancer. She is the author of Post-Diagnosis, a volume of poetry, and co-author of a work on ecology and human rights in Africa, The Spoils of Famine. She has taught biology and held visiting fellowships at several universities, and was recently appointed to serve on President Clinton's National Action Plan on Breast Cancer. She was named Ms. Magazine's 1997 Woman of the Year, and is the author of 1997's highly acclaimed Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment. MORE >>