Macroeconomic impact of the subject is the trillions of $ wasted in foreign adventures.
A new book by William Hartung and Ben Freeman should remind us why that argument is unserious. There exists a far larger and vastly better documented class of American hucksters: U.S. defense contractors, who are responsible not for millions but billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.
Through close reporting and rigorous research, Hartung and Freeman document how Pentagon contractors over the past 40 years have captured the entire foreign policy–making process, from the House committees chaired by top recipients of defense contractor contributions where defense industry pork is packaged, to the cable news studios where the wasteful and often criminal behavior of defense companies is ignored or laundered in puff pieces that border on infomercials, all designed to ensure that five companies receive their annual welfare checks from the U.S. government.
Most troubling, as The Trillion Dollar War Machine makes clear, much of this corruption is perfectly legal, even banal; it is institutionalized through the defense-industry revolving door, ensnaring the bipartisan political class and the military brass alike. Roughly two-thirds of defense lobbyists now come from the Pentagon itself—often former acquisition officials who once wrote, audited, or managed the very contracts they later lobby to expand—while campaign contributions are routinely delivered to members of Congress on the same days those lobbyists meet with them to press for increased weapons spending.
Many of the same lobbyists pressing Congress on behalf of U.S. arms manufacturers simultaneously represent foreign governments such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
More at the link.