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US military industrial complex drives its foreign policy: Analyst

Saturday, 02 July 2016 5:44 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 02 July 2016 5:44 PM ]

US foreign policy is mainly affected by the military industrial complex, Rickard says.

America's massive military aid to Israel is indicative of the kind of influence the US military industrial complex has on Washington's foreign policy, says a former US intelligence linguist.

Scott Rickard made the remarks to Press TV on Saturday, a day after the White House said it had offered to substantially increase its military aid to Israel.

The White House told US Congress that America insists that the Israelis use the tens of billions of dollars they receive under the deal to buy US-made goods and services, rather than Israeli ones, according to the New York Times.

“Interesting about this particular deal is that one of the types of interests that was being discussed was around buying only American made military,” Rickard said.

The US and Israel have been engaged in intense negotiations in recent months to outline America's military aid to Israel for the next 10 years.

“This is indicative of the Americans cutting deals with foreign policy and basically funding a military industrial complex at the same time, which basically indicates the kinds of influence that the military industrial complex has on the US government and their foreign policy,” Rickard added.

The analyst further explained that what one can understand from this kind of agreement “is unfortunately a very strong American relationship with the Zionist regime that’s been going on for over a hundred years, since early 1900.”

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II. US military aid to Israel has amounted to $124.3 billion since it began in 1962, according to a congressional report released earlier this year.

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