War
Dogs is a very entertaining film that provides a mostly glamorous
perspective of the military industrial complex that has become a massive
expenditure for the US government. While the film tells the story of two young
men that start off fulfilling contracts for supplies for the military, it isn’t
until later in the film that the structure and workings of the government’s
privatized military supply sourcing becomes better explained. While War Dogs does offer the audience various
action scenes and excitement about winning contract bids to make big profits,
there is a more subtle explanation of how that system works. This is explained
over the course of multiple scenes but mainly when Efraim asks David to work for
him and explains what contracts to look for and why the government uses that
particular system. Essentially the government has a website that it uses to
solicit supplies for the military. The solicitations can range from requests
for tanks, to small arms, to ammunition. With the solicitations posted on the
website, various companies and corporations bid to fulfill the contract with
the lowest cost. The entity with the lowest priced bid will generally win the
contract and will enter into an agreement with the military to provide those
supplies for the military within a certain time frame. Efraim points out that
the large corporations generally stick to competing for the larger contracts
and the smaller solicitations get ignored. Efraim aims to fulfill these smaller
neglected solicitations because they tend to be much easier to win. He refers
to them as crumbs and says he lives off of the crumbs. The massive final
solicitation that brings Efraim and David down is one to supply the Afghani
army with 7.62x39mm ammunition. The source they have exclusive access to is an
Eastern European country with warehouses full of Soviet era weapons and
ammunition left over from the Cold War. This seems to be the only source in the
world for the amount of AK-47 ammunition needed for the contract. It turns out
that the ammunition is manufactured in China rather than the former USSR and is
subject to sanctions which prevent its purchase by the US government. Rather
than lose the $300 million contract, Efraim and David decide to repackage the
ammunition into plastic bags and cardboard boxes that do not have the ‘Made In
China’ markings in order to circumvent the legal issues of its purchase. Many
times it is mentioned that the government would rather look the other way on
the legal issues of the origin of the ammunition, implying that the military would
rather get a good price on the deal that abide by the restrictions of the
sanction as long as they could have plausible deniability. This turns out not
to be the case and the government launches an investigation after they are
tipped off about the sanction violation. Efraim and David are then arrested and
the contract is terminated.
My
reaction to this film was that it was an entertaining and indirect way of
pointing out the way that the military operates in terms of how it acquires its
supplies and the big business involved. War
Dogs was done in a way similar to the directors other films with depicting action
along with some “bro fantasy” (Bahr, 2016). It did have a similar feel to The
Hangover with the same fun partying scenes. However I did feel that it used
comedy to veil some exposure of the military industrial complex and how that
whole system operates. I’ll admit that despite my political believes and
opposition to how that system operates, War
Dogs did have me wondering how I could start getting into some of the
smaller contracts on that website. My father’s company has bid on and fulfilled
contracts for the government using the same system; however it was not related
to arms or ammunitions. The film did make me feel that it is probably an issue
that war is such a big business and that individuals and corporations make so
much money from wars that don’t end.
Looking at how the film exposes how
military supply and the military industrial complex works, it seems obvious
that there are both pros and cons to this system. At the very least it means
that the government opens the bidding up publically so that people can see what
it is purchasing and so that others besides massive corporations can compete.
While there are positive effects of private supplying for the military such as
lower cost and more innovation, it seems alarming that there is so much money
in war. The film did a lot to point out how much money could be made by
supplying militaries in the never ending conflicts. I suspect this may have
much to do with why the conflicts are never ending. It also concerns me how
these corporations supply other militaries that have been engaged in long lived
conflicts, perpetuating the conflicts further. This film plays perfectly into
the idea of the Death-State. While the military machine of fascism has passed
the even more potent global system of a global economic war-machine has risen
to power (Holland, 2011). This is essentially what War Dogs describes as the military industrial complex. The mega
corporations that Efraim and David initially couldn’t compete with are that
complex. They later became part of that complex. Additionally the film
highlighted the importance of the global economy in that system. The United
States wanted to purchase ammunition for the Afghani army from Eastern Europe
that was instead manufactured in China. Globalization is a substantial
difference in today’s government versus the nationalist focus of the fascists.
Lindsey Bahr (2016)
http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/war-dogs-movie-tells-a-crazy-story-of-young-arms-dealers
http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/war-dogs-movie-tells-a-crazy-story-of-young-arms-dealers
Nomad Citizenship by Eugene W. Holland (2011)
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