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In shambles, fleeing from the capital of Philadelphia with the British hard on their heels, the American Continental Army found itself in Valley Forge, in the dead of winter. It was December 1777, and as snow and frost crept in, George Washington's soldiers needed warm shelter to survive what would become a six-month encampment. So, they took their axes to the surrounding white oaks and laid the landscape bare. To construct their makeshift military base, the Continental Army cut down an estimated 127,000 trees for firewood and building
materials. Valley Forge, one of the foundational stories of the American Revolutionary War, was not just a turning point in the war, but an exemplar of just how destructive military conquest is on the land. War is hell. Not just for people, but for the planet. In a vicious cycle, the dual destruction of the environment and humanity feed off each other, creating unlivable scenes of apocalypse. [play clips of war] Valley Forge is just a minuscule blip in the storied history of military destruction. The damages of war are well documented,
and as time marches forward, the destruction has exponentially increased. In the end, we all lose in war. War kills our empathy, war kills our kin, war kills our planet. And yet, nations continue to load bullets into their guns and pull the trigger. Warmongering has become a political constant. And for that, we have the ruling class to blame. Today, we'll trudge through the trenches of war. Uncovering the forces behind an economy that is based on perpetual war that crushes the global working class and the planet under its combat
boots. We'll travel from the jungles of Vietnam to the corn fields of Iowa, uncover the fiscal recklessness of the Pentagon, and unpack the hidden truths this man exposed. This is the story of endless wars and endless destruction. This is the story of a capitalist ruling class unleashed. This video is made possible by my amazing viewers who support me on Patreon. Over the last few years, my revenue from ads and sponsorships has dropped dramatically. So much so, that if this trend continues, making videos like these will become less and less financially
viable. So I have a quick ask as the year draws to a close. Our Changing Climate will always be free for everyone regardless of how much I make, but OCC is a one-person operation and it would be nice to earn enough to pay for rent and my health insurance, which gets more expensive every year. So, if you've been a long time viewer, or just stumbled across the channel, thank you for watching, and please consider supporting Our Changing Climate on patreon with the link in the description. Literally just one dollar a month from a small portion of my audience would be huge for the channel and to be honest, me.
The Rise of the Military Industrial Complex In the twilight hours of his tenure in the White House, Dwight D. Eisenhower was surprisingly candid. Free from the shackles of his presidential duties, Eisenhower laid bare his thoughts on a growing threat to the U.S. and the world in his farewell address: ["we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience… In the councils of government, we 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.] This is straight from the horse's mouth. Eisenhower was not only one of the most decorated generals in U.S. history, but also the sitting president-and in 1961, he warned that the confluence of the military establishment and arms industry was a grave threat to the possibility of peace. Unfortunately, those words were all too prescient. Since 1961, military spending has ballooned, and so too have the pocketbooks of war profiteers. But
we're getting ahead of ourselves. To understand our present, we have to understand our past. Because the history of the United States is a history of perpetual war. Since its founding, the settler-colonial nation has been embroiled in armed conflict. From the settler-colonial wars and genocides that decimated Indigenous populations across Turtle Island to the imperialist conquests in the Philippines, to World War 1 and 2, and now the long succession of regime change wars and proxy conflicts masquerading as anti-communist or anti-terror campaigns. With each treaty and
conflict ended comes a new threat. This is not by chance. This is the path of a capitalist war economy that craves manufactured crisis. If we look at the United States following WW2, for example, we're met with a war machine looking for a fresh enemy to sink its teeth into. The massive war effort that had jump-started the economy after the Great Depression was winding down, and it needed a new meal to sate its violent appetite. And it found its juicy steak in communism [play clips of fearmongering about communism]. Anti-communism efforts throughout
the second half of the 20th century gave rise to a massive military industry that funneled public dollars into private profits. From Nixon to Carter to Reagan to Bush Sr., politicians continuously increased defense spending, citing various enemies at the gates- in the process creating a constant treadmill of violence and intervention that siphoned money away from the public safety net. Because these wars don't arise spontaneously. They don't explode mysteriously into the air, dispersing destruction like the pyroclastic flow of a volcano. Conflicts-especially American
ones-have a purpose. And it's rarely for peace or safety. The U.S. military protects the interests of multinational corporations abroad, it's used to control raw materials, to open up new markets for capitalist overproduction, and most importantly to generate profits for the ruling class- specifically, the arms and defense industries that supply the guns, technologies, chemicals, and infrastructure to the military. These are the multinational corporations like Halliburton, which netted $900 million in defense and infrastructure contracts from the Iraq war, or Raytheon,
which has made billions selling bombs and missile systems to Israel by way of the U.S., facilitating the Palestinian genocide. A company whose CEO in the aftermath of October 7th, licked his chops at the potential profits soon to be reaped: ["I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you're going to see a benefit of this restocking,"]. Or Lockheed Martin, who netted $71 billion in profit in 2024, while Israel used their F-35 fighter jets to flatten Gaza with bombs. These corporations form the military-industrial complex-the very specter Eisenhower warned about.
They now have a stranglehold on global political agendas. And thanks to that tight grip capitalist arms dealers enjoy on American foreign policy, the U.S. military budget has ballooned since 1960. When adjusted for inflation, it's almost doubled from roughly $475 billion in 1960 to nearly $900 billion in 2025. That's more than the next nine countries combined-40% of all global military spending. Worse still, the Pentagon doesn't even know where all that money goes. It has failed seven consecutive audits and cannot account for nearly 40% of its budget. And
much of the money we can account for is spent on private contractors. The Raytheons, the Lockheeds, the Halliburtons-these corporations enjoy exclusive no-bid contracts that funnel taxpayer dollars into their coffers. Like Lockheed Martin's $2.98 billion 10-year contract with the Department of Defense to deliver missile defense systems. And these contracts are common for private arms dealers because in the U.S. there is a "one-ness" of military and business. Defense contractors lobby Congress, and in turn, Congress gives lavish contracts to those very same contractors in a
revolving door relationship. Indeed, a recent investigation from the Quincy Institute found that out of the 32 four-star military officers who retired after June 2018, 26 took executive positions in the arms industry. This is the military-industrial complex in the 21st century. Generals and politicians assure war continues in return for fat checks and rich stock options. In other words: people in the imperial periphery must die so capitalists in the core can get rich. But before we talk about how much damage this permanent war economy is causing to people
and the planet, I want to make one thing clear. This massive U.S. military expenditure necessarily means an austerity politics for the country. Instead of investing heavily in its people, the US has turned towards funneling taxpayer dollars into a massive military apparatus that spans the globe with violence. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, aka the capitalist ruling class, continue to spurn the programs that will actually increase the well-being of the working class, while funneling more and more money into the military. We somehow never have enough
money to expand healthcare for all or build clean, renewable infrastructure and housing, yet there's always enough in the budget for a $45 million military parade or $134 million to deploy marines in Los Angeles or $2.98 billion for a missile defense system. This is called military Keynesianism. Instead of attempting to ward off the inevitable economic crises caused by capitalist overproduction by investing in public works and a welfare state, the U.S. ensures a perpetual war economy so that the military-industrial complex continues to create endless demand. In short, state spending not for the people, but for war. As economist Joan Robinson writes: "The most convenient thing for a government to
spend on is armaments. The military-industrial complex [thus] took charge. I do not think it plausible to suppose that the cold war and several hot wars were invented just to solve the employment problem. But certainly they have had that effect." And here is where we see the United States' obsession with war begin to reveal itself. Because war has become, and indeed, as always been, about so much more than defense, peace, or safety. War is all about profit. U.S. Empire and Forever War: At the turn of the 21st century, the imperial core was itching for conquest. Without the threat of the
Soviet Union and communism looming large, the military-industrial complex needed new enemies to justify its insatiable appetite for expansion. Indeed, as American diplomat George Kennan predicted in 1987, "Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy." The U.S. ruling class was looking for answers at the turn of the century.
That is, until two planes hit the World Trade Center in the financial district of Manhattan while another struck the Pentagon. In the smoking rubble of collapsed buildings on American soil, the U.S. had found its war [play clips of"war on terror"]. The U.S. and its allies beat the drums of war, and defense contractors licked their chops. Business was about to boom, and people were about to die. [play clip] This is the cycle of our current state of perpetual war under capitalism. As I've already mentioned, the U.S. is constantly at war and is often provoking proxy wars via
settler colonial projects like Israel. I'll say it one more time to be clear, the majority of the wars the U.S. has fought, and the massive military structure it's built, have rarely been in the name of peace or safety. More often than not, they've centered around profit and control. The United States has a long history of using military power to assert dominance over potentially strategic or profitable entities. Like in Panama in 1989, when George H. W. Bush deployed 25,000 troops to oust the military leader and previous CIA "asset," General Noriega, who began acting against U.S.
interests. In Noriega's stead, Bush propped up Guillermo Endara, who was much more loyal to the U.S. global agenda and willing to allow the U.S. to maintain control over the Panama Canal. Or in 1973 when the United States supported a coup to overthrow democratically-elected Chilean socialist leader Salvador Allende, replacing him with ruthless dictator Augusto Pinochet, who in the months following his rise to power imprisoned, tortured and killed thousands of supposed leftist-sympathizers in order to establish an economy that a New York Times reporter called "a banker's delight." Or the U.S. backed indiscriminate slaughter
of East Timorese by Indonesian forces, or the multi-decade war razing Iraq to the ground to protect the flow of fuel from Middle Eastern oil fields into American cars. The same oil fields, which Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, secured a noncompetitive contract for up to seven billion dollars to rebuild. The list drags on. But the point here is this, wars often have ulterior motives then national defense or spreading democracy. One of the most decorated marines in U.S. history, Major General Smedley Butler rams this reality home in his book,
War is a Racket: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism." And as these gangsters of capitalism help line the pockets of the elite, they sow death and destruction across the planet. Genocide and Ecocide for profit. 241 years after Continental soldiers chopped down white oaks at Valley Forge, 50 Israeli settlers were similarly wielding axes. Their aim, however, was not to provide warmth or shelter, but to destroy a Palestinian
olive grove, a tree essential to Palestinian economies and way of life. As soldiers from the Israel Defense Force watched in approval, the vigilantes chopped down branch after branch, permanently damaging trees that had been there for centuries. Unfortunately, this wasn't an isolated incident. Since 1967, Israelis have clear-cut over 1 million olive trees throughout Palestine. This is ecocide. Killing the land, to kill the people. As perpetual war envelops the globe, millions die at the barrels of gas-guzzling tanks and fossil-fueled war machines that kill the
planet in their wake. Genocide and ecocide are tightly intertwined. Over 61,000 dead in Gaza, while the U.S. funnels more and more money into the Israel war machine which has, since the start of this current spike in genocidal violent, caused more emissions than whole countries like Estonia or Costa Rica. Or in Iraq as the U.S. military killed over 100,000, it decimated the landscapes with toxic chemicals and shrapnel, and created roughly 141 million metric tons of emissions. Or in Vietnam, after 1 to 3 million died in the U.S.'s imperialist war,
the people and landscapes are still healing from the damage of chemicals and destruction like DDT. As U.S. military kills, it also emits copious amounts of carbon dioxide. If it were ranked as a country in terms of emissions, it would rank above almost 150 other countries. And this gas-guzzling nature of the military-industrial complex creates a vicious death spiral. Fossil-fueled war machines create environmental destruction and climate change, and then climate change makes conflict and destabilization more likely. War means creates a cycle of emissions and violence.
And looking along the lines of history, war has always been impacted or spurred on by climatic shifts. In ancient China, dynastic wars, and nationwide social unrest often occurred during "cold phases," revealing that climate often nudges people into conflict, but certainly can't be claimed to directly cause it. More recently, studies unpacking the factors leading to the Syrian civil war pointed towards climate change as one of many nudges that ignited the fires of conflict. Climate change is now, in the words of the Department of Defense, a "threat multiplier."
So, although there are many more apparent consequences of war- death, the massive emissions output of war machines, there are also indirect consequences. Consequences that can be equally as devastating, like the birth of the modern chemical fertilizer and herbicide industry after World War 2 that has decimated soil health, given rise to massive monocropped fields exemplified in the corn and soy farms of Iowa, and flung us head long into a fossil-fuels agricultural system that's headed for a potential soil fertility cliff. Or that war often causes oil price spikes,
which means more profits for the fossil fuel industry and ultimately a slower and greater reluctance to transition away from oil and gas. So, even if we're not counting direct emissions from combat, conflict means planetary harm. Whether it's the environment, climate change, millions dead, an austerity economy, or soil collapse, one thing is clear: war never benefits everyday people and almost always benefits the capitalist ruling class. War is good for business after all. So, ending this perpetual war economy means more than just ceasefires or tenuous treaties. It means radical change. Towards Peace. Since 2013, the people of Tinian, an island in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana, have been fighting the U.S. military. Again and
again, the Navy has sought to expand operations at their base at Tinian and conduct what Earthjustice calls "live-fire war games… includ[ing] artillery, mortars, rockets, amphibious assaults, attack helicopters and warplanes." The expansion would destroy farmland, native ecosystems, and coral reefs, and would also be a constant intrusion of sound for those who call the island home. But against all odds, those indigenous to Tinian, known as Chamarros, have fought back. For years, they successfully delayed and blocked expansions and restorations of the military base that has
existed on the island since WWII. Butthe U.S. war machine and the ruling class that egges it on are insatiable. Just a few days before making this video, the U.S. Navy released a new proposal that they claim is more environmentally friendly and better for the people of the island. As one local reporter notes, ["There will be no high-impact artillery and no rockets,"] but of course, there will still be ["live-fire and demolition ranges, ammunition storage, and radar infrastructure."] And so, the battle continues to this day, a battle that the people of Tinian will have seemingly have
to fight until the military-industrial complex takes its last breath. Until there is lasting peace. But peace will never come in a capitalist system. Where profits reign supreme, and the most profitable thing to do is to kill and destroy. Capitalism thrives on, and indeed, wields crisis to adapt and change. As Ståle Holgersen writes in his book Against the Crisis "Crises have a double function; they both shake capitalism and keep the system alive. Crises both change and consolidate. Capitalism needs the turbulence to survive."And there are no better manufactured crises than wars.
So, although states might solve individual conflicts with diplomacy, in the long run, there will always be another war. Unfortunately, I by no means have the answer to how to end all wars, but it feels to me that ending ballooning military budgets and eventually transforming our economy away from a profit-centered model is a good start. Demilitarization across the globe, but especially in the U.S., is how we must begin the work of repairing the harm of war. But peace ultimately must be the goal. Which means, developing systems- both economic and social- that
eradicate the profit incentives of war, and working to repair harms and conflict through non-violent means. Because, at the end of the day, no person should ever have to die just so someone on the other side of the world can make a little more money. As we draw near the end of the year, I have an ask. For almost nine years, I've been making Our Changing Climate videos all by myself, seeking to educate and ask questions about the root causes and solutions of the climate and environmental crisis. My videos will always be free to watch, but recently, my revenue has slipped because of a combination of demonitization and a declining ad rates. So I'm turning to you, the wonderful people who watch my videos month in and month out. If you have the means,
please consider supporting the channel on Patreon using the link in the description. My goal is to reach 900 supporters by the end of the year. This means 200 of you are watching right now would have to pledge your support, I think we can do that. I've got some huge plans for 2026, like potentially getting into 3D animation and much longer, in depth videos, and that kind of support could make those risks financially feasible. Just pledging a dollar a month is huge for the channel, and when you become a patreon supporter you'll get early access to my videos, bonus content,
and or even the occasional full length interview with authors or scholars. But if you aren't able to become a channel patron, please don't worry, just by watching this video to the end, you've done your part. Thank you, and thank you so much to those who already support me on Patreon. You're the reason I'm able to make videos like this. Thanks again, and I'll see you next month.
