President Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the phrase military-industrial complex in his farewell address of January 17, 1961, using it to refer to the combination of the large defense apparatus established to wage the Cold War (1946–1991) and the massive sector of the U.S. economy devoted to weapons procurement, research, and development. As a fiscal conservative, Eisenhower regretted the costs of global containment of communism, which was the principal strategy of both Democratic and Republican administrations until the 1980s. He once described the armaments race as "theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed … humanity hanging from a cross of iron" (Eisenhower, "The Chance for Peace"). By the end of his presidency, he feared the social consequences of the combination of defense and industrial interests. "In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex," he warned. "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes" (Eisenhower, "Farewell Address"). Eisenhower feared that the military-industrial complex would promote an arms race for its own profit, and that this race would weaken U.S. society by diverting funds to military use and lead to war, as arms races in the past had done.
The American military-industrial complex was a post-World War II phenomenon. The temporary centralization and conversion of civilian industries to warmaking purposes had occurred during the World Wars I and II. In both instances, companies retooled to meet military needs, but with demobilization they eventually returned to peacetime production. The advent of the Cold War, particularly the drafting of National Security Council Paper Number 68 (NSC #68) in 1950, reversed this process. NSC #68 created a permanent defense establishment with a vastly expanded military budget that at its peak accounted for nearly one-tenth of the gross domestic product (GDP). With billions of federal dollars being pumped into weapons programs, the aerospace, computer, and communications industries turned out products for military purposes that only later found civilian applications. Cellular phones and e-mail, for instance, are military technologies that filtered into civilian society.
National security largess subsidized numerous corporations, particularly in the aerospace industry, which produced warplanes and missiles; these corporations included Lockheed, Convair, Grumman, General Dynamics, McDonnell, Pratt and Whitney, and North American Aviation. Other corporations benefiting from government contracts included munitions juggernaut DuPont, computer titan IBM, and jet engine-maker General Electric. During the four-decades-long Cold War, as defense contracts were repeatedly awarded to major companies with the ability to fill them efficiently, industrial capacity was centralized. By 1968, the top 100 American companies held nearly half of all manufacturing assets (Hooks, 212). The military-industrial complex even penetrated leading U.S. universities, funding academic research and scientific projects with military applications. By the 1980s, an estimated 6 million Americans worked for the nation's defense establishment.
The Pentagon became a large landlord to defense firms and an insatiable consumer of their products. For instance, between 1952 and 1956 the Department of Defense owned more than 60 percent of all aeronautics plants and equipment. Between 1960 and 1973, the period spanning U.S. intervention in Vietnam, the Pentagon consumed 77 percent of all U.S. ordnance output; 72 percent of aeronautics production; 39 percent of radio, television, and communications equipment; 34 percent of all electronics components; and 26 percent of transportation equipment (Hooks, 257). Defense spending spurred the development of what came to be called the "gun belt" of armaments-related industries, which stretched from Connecticut and the Atlantic Coast through the Southwest. California and Texas, where large military bases, weapons testing facilities, and major defense contractors were located, developed enhanced political power. Politicians from these states sought key posts on congressional committees that set defense expenditures. An iron triangle linked congressional panels with the armed services and defense firms.
Several themes animated the debate about the military-industrial complex. Some observers described the phenomenon as military Keynsianism, in which steady spending on defense stabilized the American economy. Critics charged that although this softened dips in the business cycle it also led to massive deficits, which threatened the nation's long-term economic health. Others argued that unchecked defense spending neglected vital facets of American society, including education, health care, and urban renewal. When the Vietnam War began to suck dollars out of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society reforms, Americans debated whether they really could have both guns and butter. Profiteering and cost overruns stoked public ire in the 1970s and 1980s when it was revealed that the cost of basic items such as hammers and screws procured through defense contracts exceeded by a hundredfold the price of similar items at the local hardware store.
By the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the military-industrial complex receded from popular consciousness. By 1999, in the absence of the Soviet threat, American defense expenditures shrank to 3 percent of the GDP. But with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and two successive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, defense spending rose beyond $400 billion in the 2004 budget. The headlong pursuit of homeland security renewed concerns that the influence of a reinvigorated military-industrial-national security complex would be an enduring facet of American life well into the twenty-first century.
Hooks, Gregory. Forging the Military-Industrial Complex. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Markusen, Ann, et. al. The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Internet Resource
Eisenhower, Dwight D. "The Chance for Peace" (16 April 1953) and "Farewell Address" (17 January 1961). The American Presidency Project, Public Papers of the Presidents. Available from <www.presidency.ucsb.edu/site/do cs/index_pppus.php>.
Matt Wasniewski
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