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Military–industrial complex

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The expression military–industrial complex (MIC) describes the relationship between a country's military and the defense industry that supplies it, seen together as a vested interest which influences public policy.[1][2][3][4] A driving factor behind the relationship between the military and the defense-minded corporations is that both sides benefit—one side from obtaining war weapons, and the other from being paid to supply them.[5] The term is most often used in reference to the system behind the armed forces of the United States, where the relationship is most prevalent due to close links among defense contractors, the Pentagon, and politicians.[6][7] The expression gained popularity after a warning of the relationship's detrimental effects, in the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 17, 1961.[8][9]

In the context of the United States, the appellation is sometimes extended to military–industrial–congressional complex (MICC), adding the U.S. Congress to form a three-sided relationship termed an "iron triangle".[10] Its three legs include political contributions, political approval for military spending, lobbying to support bureaucracies, and oversight of the industry; or more broadly, the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as corporations and institutions of the defense contractors, private military contractors, the Pentagon, Congress, and the executive branch.[11]

Etymology

In his farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned U.S. citizens about the "military–industrial complex".
Eisenhower's farewell address, January 17, 1961. The term military–industrial complex is used at 8:16. Length: 15:30.

President of the United States (and five-star general since World War II) Dwight D. Eisenhower used the term in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:[12]

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. 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.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together. [emphasis added]

The phrase was thought to have been "war-based" industrial complex before becoming "military" in later drafts of Eisenhower's speech, a claim passed on only by oral history.[13] Geoffrey Perret, in his biography of Eisenhower, claims that, in one draft of the speech, the phrase was "military–industrial–congressional complex", indicating the essential role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry, but the word "congressional" was dropped from the final version to appease the then-currently elected officials.[14] James Ledbetter calls this a "stubborn misconception" not supported by any evidence; likewise a claim by Douglas Brinkley that it was originally "military–industrial–scientific complex".[14][15] Additionally, Henry Giroux claims that it was originally "military–industrial–academic complex".[16] The actual authors of the speech were Eisenhower's speechwriters Ralph E. Williams and Malcolm Moos.[17]

The 20 largest US defense contractors ranked by their defense revenue as of 2020[18]

Attempts to conceptualize something similar to a modern "military–industrial complex" existed before Eisenhower's address. Ledbetter finds the precise term used in 1947 in close to its later meaning in an article in Foreign Affairs by Winfield W. Riefler.[14][19] In 1956, sociologist C. Wright Mills had claimed in his book The Power Elite that a class of military, business, and political leaders, driven by mutual interests, were the real leaders of the state, and were effectively beyond democratic control. Friedrich Hayek mentions in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom the danger of a support of monopolistic organization of industry from World War II political remnants:

Another element which after this war is likely to strengthen the tendencies in this direction will be some of the men who during the war have tasted the powers of coercive control and will find it difficult to reconcile themselves with the humbler roles they will then have to play [in peaceful times].[20]

Vietnam War–era activists, such as Seymour Melman, referred frequently to the concept, and use continued throughout the Cold War: George F. Kennan wrote in his preface to Norman Cousins's 1987 book The Pathology of Power, "Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military–industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy."[21]

U.S. military presence around the world in 2007. As of 2018, the United States still had many bases and troops stationed globally.

In the late 1990s James Kurth asserted, "By the mid-1980s... the term had largely fallen out of public discussion." He went on to argue that "[w]hatever the power of arguments about the influence of the military–industrial complex on weapons procurement during the Cold War, they are much less relevant to the current era".[22]

Contemporary students and critics of U.S. militarism continue to refer to and employ the term, however. For example, historian Chalmers Johnson uses words from the second, third, and fourth paragraphs quoted above from Eisenhower's address as an epigraph to Chapter Two ("The Roots of American Militarism") of a 2004 volume[23] on this subject. P. W. Singer's book concerning private military companies illustrates contemporary ways in which industry, particularly an information-based one, still interacts with the U.S. federal and the Pentagon.[24]

The expressions permanent war economy and war corporatism are related concepts that have also been used in association with this term.[25][26]

Post–Cold War

United States Defense Spending 2001–2017

At the end of the Cold War, American defense contractors bewailed what they called declining government weapons spending.[27][28] They saw escalation of tensions, such as with Russia over Ukraine, as new opportunities for increased weapons sales, and have pushed the political system, both directly and through industry groups such as the National Defense Industrial Association, to spend more on military hardware. Pentagon contractor-funded American think tanks such as the Lexington Institute and the Atlantic Council have also demanded increased spending in view of the perceived Russian threat.[28][29] Independent Western observers such as William Huntzberger, director of the Arms & Security Project at the Center for International Policy, noted that "Russian saber-rattling has additional benefits for weapons makers because it has become a standard part of the argument for higher Pentagon spending—even though the Pentagon already has more than enough money to address any actual threat to the United States."[28][30]

Eras

History of the United States expansion
and influence
Colonialism
Militarism
Foreign policy
Concepts

Some sources divide the history of the military–industrial complex into three distinct eras.[31]

First era

From 1797 to 1941, the government only relied on civilian industries while the country was actually at war. The government owned their own shipyards and weapons manufacturing facilities which they relied on through World War I. With World War II came a massive shift in the way that the American government armed the military.

With the onset of World War II President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Production Board to coordinate civilian industries and shift them into wartime production. Throughout World War II arms production in the United States went from around one percent of the annual GDP to 40 percent of the GDP.[31] Various American companies, such as Boeing and General Motors, maintained and expanded their defense divisions.[31] These companies have gone on to develop various technologies that have improved civilian life as well, such as night-vision goggles and GPS.[31]

Second era

The second era is identified as beginning with the coining of the term by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. This era continued through the Cold War period, up to the end of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union. A 1965 article written by Marc Pilisuk and Thomas Hayden says benefits of the Military Industrial Complex of the United States include the advancement of the civilian technology market as civilian companies benefit from innovations from the MIC and vice versa.[32] In 1993 the Pentagon urged defense contractors to consolidate due to the collapse of communism and shrinking defense budget.[31]

Third (current) era

A pie chart showing global military expenditures by country for 2019, in US$ billions, according to SIPRI

In the third era, defense contractors either consolidated or shifted their focus to civilian innovation. From 1992 to 1997 there was a total of US$55 billion worth of mergers in the defense industry, with major defense companies purchasing smaller competitors.[31]

The American domestic economy is now tied directly to the success of the MIC which has led to concerns of repression as Cold War-era attitudes are still prevalent among the American public.[33]

Shifts in values and the collapse of communism have ushered in a new era for the military–industrial complex. The Department of Defense works in coordination with traditional military–industrial complex aligned companies such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Many former defense contractors have shifted operations to the civilian market and sold off their defense departments.[31]

Military subsidy theory

According to the military subsidy theory, the Cold War–era mass production of aircraft benefited the civilian aircraft industry. The theory asserts that the technologies developed during the Cold War along with the financial backing of the military led to the dominance of American aviation companies. There is also strong evidence that the United States federal government intentionally paid a higher price for these innovations to serve as a subsidy for civilian aircraft advancement.[34]

Current applications

Share of arms sales by country. Source is provided by SIPRI.[35]

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), total world spending on military expenses in 2022 was $2,240 billion. 39% of this total, or $837 billion, was spent by the United States. China was the second largest spender, with $292 billion and 13% of the global share.[36] The privatization of the production and invention of military technology also leads to a complicated relationship with significant research and development of many technologies. In 2011, the United States spent more (in absolute numbers) on its military than the next 13 countries combined.[37]

The military budget of the United States for the 2009 fiscal year was $515.4 billion. Adding emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending brings the sum to $651.2 billion.[38] This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget. Overall, the U.S. federal government is spending about $1 trillion annually on military-related purposes.[39]

In a 2012 story, Salon reported, "Despite a decline in global arms sales in 2010 due to recessionary pressures, the United States increased its market share, accounting for a whopping 53 percent of the trade that year. Last year saw the United States on pace to deliver more than $46 billion in foreign arms sales."[40] The military and arms industry also tend to contribute heavily to incumbent members of Congress.[41]

Similar concepts

See also: Industrial complex, List of industrial complexes, Medical–industrial complex, and Prison–industrial complex

A thesis similar to the military–industrial complex was originally expressed by Daniel Guérin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government ties to heavy industry. It can be defined as, "an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs."[42] An exhibit of the trend was made in Franz Leopold Neumann's book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism in 1942, a study of how Nazism came into a position of power in a democratic state.

Within decades of its inception, the idea of the military–industrial complex gave rise to the ideas of other similar industrial complexes, including the animal–industrial complex, prison–industrial complex, pharmaceutical–industrial complex, entertainment-industrial complex, and medical–industrial complex.[43]: ix–xxv  Virtually all institutions in sectors ranging from agriculture, medicine, entertainment, and media, to education, criminal justice, security, and transportation, began reconceiving and reconstructing in accordance with capitalist, industrial, and bureaucratic models with the aim of realizing profit, growth, and other imperatives. According to Steven Best, all these systems interrelate and reinforce one another.[43]

The concept of the military–industrial complex has been also expanded to include the entertainment and creative industries as well. For an example in practice, Matthew Brummer describes Japan's Manga Military and how the Ministry of Defense uses popular culture and the moe that it engenders to shape domestic and international perceptions.[44]

An alternative term to describe the interdependence between the military-industrial complex and the entertainment industry is coined by James Der Derian as "Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network".[45]

Ray McGovern extended this appellation to Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex, MICIMATT.[46]

See also

Economics of national defense efforts
Literature and media
Other complexes or axes

References

Citations

  1. ^ "military industrial complex". American Heritage Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016. Retrieved March 3, 2016.
  2. ^ "definition of military-industrial complex (American English)". OxfordDictionaries.com. Archived from the original on March 7, 2016. Retrieved March 3, 2016.
  3. ^ "Definition of Military–industrial complex". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved March 3, 2016.
  4. ^ Roland, Alex (2009). "The Military-Industrial Complex: lobby and trope". In Bacevich, Andrew J. (ed.). The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II. Columbia University Press. pp. 335–370. ISBN 978-0231131599.
  5. ^ "What is the Military-Industrial Complex?". Retrieved February 5, 2017.
  6. ^ "Ike's Warning Of Military Expansion, 50 Years Later". NPR. January 17, 2011. Retrieved March 27, 2019.
  7. ^ "SIPRI Year Book 2008; Armaments, Disarmaments and International Security" Oxford University Press 2008 ISBN 978-0199548958
  8. ^ "The Military–Industrial Complex; The Farewell Address of Presidente Eisenhower" Basements publications 2006 ISBN 0976642395
  9. ^ Held, David; McGrew, Anthony G.; Goldblatt, David (1999). "The expanding reach of organized violence". In Perraton, Jonathan (ed.). Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. Stanford University Press. p. 108. ISBN 978-0804736275.
  10. ^ Higgs, Robert (2006). Depression, War, and Cold War : Studies in Political Economy: Studies in Political Economy. Oxford University Press. pp. ix, 138. ISBN 978-0195346084. Retrieved March 3, 2016.
  11. ^ "Long-term Historical Reflection on the Rise of Military-Industrial, Managerial Statism or "Military-Industrial Complexes"". Kimball Files. University of Oregon. Retrieved June 21, 2014.
  12. ^ "President Dwight Eisenhower Farewell Address". C-Span. January 17, 1961.
  13. ^ John Milburn (December 10, 2010). "Papers shed light on Eisenhower's farewell address". Associated Press. Retrieved January 28, 2011.
  14. ^ a b c Ledbetter, James (January 25, 2011). "Guest Post: 50 Years of the "Military–Industrial Complex"". Schott's Vocab. New York Times. Retrieved January 25, 2011.
  15. ^ Brinkley, Douglas (September 2001). "Eisenhower; His farewell speech as President inaugurated the spirit of the 1960s". American Heritage. 52 (6). Archived from the original on March 23, 2006. Retrieved January 25, 2011.
  16. ^ Giroux, Henry (June 2007). "The University in Chains: Confronting the Military–Industrial–Academic Complex". Paradigm Publishers. Archived from the original on August 20, 2007. Retrieved May 16, 2011.
  17. ^ Griffin, Charles "New Light on Eisenhower's Farewell Address", in Presidential Studies Quarterly 22 (Summer 1992): 469–479
  18. ^ "Top 100 | Defense News, News about defense programs, business, and technology".
  19. ^ Riefler, Winfield W. (October 1947). "Our Economic Contribution to Victory". Foreign Affairs. 26 (1): 90–103. doi:10.2307/20030091. JSTOR 20030091.
  20. ^ Hayek, F. A., (1976) "The Road to Serfdom", London: Routledge, p. 146, note 1
  21. ^ Kennan, George Frost (1997). At a Century's Ending: Reflections 1982–1995. W.W. Norton and Company. p. 118. ISBN 978-0393316094.
  22. ^ Kurth 1999.
  23. ^ Johnson, Chalmers (2004). The sorrows of empire: Militarism, secrecy, and the end of the republic. New York: Metropolitan Books. p. 39.
  24. ^ Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.
  25. ^ "Sard's Permanent War Economy". againstthecurrent.org. Retrieved June 9, 2023.
  26. ^ "What Barry Says - It's War Corporatism". filmsforaction.org. Retrieved June 9, 2023.
  27. ^ Thomson Reuters Streetevents, 8 December 2015, "L-3 Communications Holding Inc. Investors Conference", p. 3, http://www.l-3com.com/sites/default/files/pdf/investor-pdf/2015_investor_conference_transcript.pdf Archived April 19, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  28. ^ a b c The Intercept, 19 August 2016, "U.S. Defense Contractors Tell Investors Russian threat is Great for Business", https://theintercept.com/2016/08/19/nato-weapons-industry/
  29. ^ U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, 11 May 2016, Testimony of M. Thomas Davis, Senior Fellow, National Defense Industrial Association, "U.S. Industry Perspective on the Department of Defense's Policies, Roles and Responsibilities for Foreign Military Sales", http://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS06/20160511/104900/HHRG-114-AS06-Bio-DavisT-20160511.pdf
  30. ^ Shindler, Michael (June 22, 2018). "The Military Industrial Complex's Assault on Liberty". The American Conservative. Retrieved June 26, 2018.
  31. ^ a b c d e f g Lynn III, William (2017). "The End of the Military-Industrial Complex". Foreign Affairs. 93: 104–110 – via EBSCOhost.
  32. ^ Pilisuk, Marc; Hayden, Thomas (July 1965). "Is There a Military Industrial Complex Which Prevents Peace?: Consensus and Countervailing Power in Pluralistic Systems". Journal of Social Issues. 21 (3): 67–117. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1965.tb00506.x. ISSN 0022-4537.
  33. ^ Moskos, Charles C. Jr. (April 1974). "The Concept of the Military-Industrial Complex: Radical Critique or Liberal Bogey?". Social Problems. 21 (4): 498–512. doi:10.2307/799988. ISSN 0037-7791. JSTOR 799988.
  34. ^ Gholz, E. (January 6, 2011). "Eisenhower Versus the Spin-off Story: Did the Rise of the Military-Industrial Complex Hurt or Help America's Commercial Aircraft Industry?". Enterprise and Society. 12 (1): 46–95. doi:10.1093/es/khq134. ISSN 1467-2227.
  35. ^ "Arms production | SIPRI".
  36. ^ Assis, Ana; Tian, Nan; Lopes da Silva, Diego; Liang, Xiao; Scarazzato, Lorenzo; Béraud-Sudreau, Lucie (April 2023). "Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2022". Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Stockholm. doi:10.55163/pnvp2622.
  37. ^ Plumer, Brad (January 7, 2013), "America's staggering defense budget, in charts", The Washington Post
  38. ^ Gpoaccess.gov Archived 2012-01-07 at the Wayback Machine
  39. ^ Robert Higgs. "The Trillion-Dollar Defense Budget Is Already Here". Retrieved March 15, 2007.
  40. ^ "America, arms-dealer to the world", Salon, January 24, 2012.
  41. ^ Jen DiMascio. "Defense goes all-in for incumbents - Jen DiMascio". POLITICO.
  42. ^ Pursell, C. (1972). The military–industrial complex. Harper & Row Publishers, New York, New York.
  43. ^ a b Steven Best; Richard Kahn; Anthony J. Nocella II; Peter McLaren, eds. (2011). "Introduction: Pathologies of Power and the Rise of the Global Industrial Complex". The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination. Rowman & Littlefield. p. xvi. ISBN 978-0739136980.
  44. ^ Diplomat, Matthew Brummer, The. "Japan: The Manga Military". The Diplomat. Retrieved January 22, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  45. ^ "Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved July 12, 2021.
  46. ^ "Once We Were Allies; Then Came MICIMATT". consortium news. May 8, 2020. Retrieved June 9, 2023.

Sources

Further reading

  • Adams, Gordon, The Iron Triangle: The Politics of Defense Contracting, 1981.[ISBN missing]
  • Andreas, Joel, Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can't Kick Militarism, ISBN 1904859011.
  • Cochran, Thomas B., William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, Milton M. Hoenig, U.S. Nuclear Warhead Production Harper and Row, 1987, ISBN 0887301258
  • Cockburn, Andrew, "The Military-Industrial Virus: How bloated budgets gut our defenses", Harper's Magazine, vol. 338, no. 2029 (June 2019), pp. 61–67. "The military-industrial complex could be said to be concerned, exclusively, with self-preservation and expansion.... The defense budget is not propelled by foreign wars. The wars are a consequence of the quest for bigger budgets."
  • Cockburn, Andrew, "Why America Goes to War: Money drives the US military machine", The Nation, vol. 313, no. 6 (20–27 September 2021), pp. 24–27.
  • Colby, Gerard, DuPont Dynasty, New York, Lyle Stuart, 1984.[ISBN missing]
  • Friedman, George and Meredith, The Future of War: Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the 21st Century, Crown, 1996, ISBN 051770403X
  • Good, Aaron (2022). American Exception: Empire and the Deep State. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 978-1510769137.
  • Hossein-Zadeh, Ismael, The Political Economy of US Militarism. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.[ISBN missing]
  • Keller, William W., Arm in Arm: The Political Economy of the Global Arms Trade. New York: Basic Books, 1995.[ISBN missing]
  • Kelly, Brian, Adventures in Porkland: How Washington Wastes Your Money and Why They Won't Stop, Villard, 1992, ISBN 0679406565
  • Lassman, Thomas C. "Putting the Military Back into the History of the Military-Industrial Complex: The Management of Technological Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1945–1960", Isis (2015) 106#1 pp. 94–120 in JSTOR
  • Mathews, Jessica T., "America's Indefensible Defense Budget", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVI, no. 12 (18 July 2019), pp. 23–24. "For many years, the United States has increasingly relied on military strength to achieve its foreign policy aims.... We are [...] allocating too large a portion of the federal budget to defense as compared to domestic needs [...] accumulating too much federal debt, and yet not acquiring a forward-looking, twenty-first-century military built around new cyber and space technologies." (p. 24.)
  • McCartney, James and Molly Sinclair McCartney, America's War Machine: Vested Interests, Endless Conflicts. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2015.[ISBN missing]
  • McDougall, Walter A., ...The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age, Basic Books, 1985, (Pulitzer Prize for History) ISBN 0801857481
  • Melman, Seymour, Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War, McGraw Hill, 1970[ISBN missing]
  • Melman, Seymour, (ed.) The War Economy of the United States: Readings in Military Industry and Economy, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1971.
  • Mills, C Wright, The Power Elite. New York, 1956.[ISBN missing]
  • Mollenhoff, Clark R., The Pentagon: Politics, Profits and Plunder. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1967[ISBN missing]
  • Patterson, Walter C., The Plutonium Business and the Spread of the Bomb, Sierra Club, 1984, ISBN 0871568373
  • Pasztor, Andy, When the Pentagon Was for Sale: Inside America's Biggest Defense Scandal, Scribner, 1995, ISBN 068419516X
  • Pierre, Andrew J., The Global Politics of Arms Sales. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.
  • Preble, Christoper (2008). "Military-Industrial Complex". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 328–329. ISBN 978-1412965804.
  • Sampson, Anthony, The Arms Bazaar: From Lebanon to Lockheed. New York: Bantam Books, 1977.[ISBN missing]
  • St. Clair, Jeffery, Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror. Common Courage Press, 2005.[ISBN missing]
  • Sweetman, Bill, "In search of the Pentagon's billion dollar hidden budgets – how the US keeps its R&D spending under wraps", from Jane's International Defence Review, online
  • Thorpe, Rebecca U. The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.[ISBN missing]
  • Watry, David M., Diplomacy at the Brink, Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden in the Cold War, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2014.[ISBN missing]
  • Weinberger, Sharon, Imaginary Weapons, New York: Nation Books, 2006.[ISBN missing]
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