Military Industrial Complex

In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower notably recognized the military-industrial complex, warning that the growing blending between corporations and the armed forces posed a direct threat to democracy. Fast-forward 50 years, and President Eisenhower's  frightening prophecy actually understates the scope of our modern system—and the dangers of the eternal march to war it has inflicted on our society. 

Fifty years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his own farewell address, warned of the rise in America of the “military-industrial complex.” An accomplished soldier and a better-than-average president, Eisenhower had devoted the a great part of his adult life studying, waging, and then seeking to avert war. Shockingly, his prophetic voice rang clearest when as president he reflected on matters related to military power and policy. “Every gun that is made,” Eisenhower told his listeners, “every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Any nation that pours its treasure into the purchase of armaments is spending more than mere money. “It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” To emphasize the point, Eisenhower offered specifics: At the time, the idea that militarizing U.S. policy might yield economic benefits outweighing the costs seemed eminently plausible. The authors of the National Security Council report “NSC-68,” the 1950 blueprint for U.S. rearmament, had made this point explicitly: boosting Pentagon spending would “increase the gross national product by more than the amount being absorbed for additional military and foreign assistance purposes.” Building up the nation’s defenses could serve as a sort of permanent economic stimulus program, putting people to work and money in their pockets. The experience of World War II had apparently validated this theory. Why shouldn’t the same logic apply to the Cold War? 

Fast forward to today Lockheed Martin Corp., Mission Systems and Sensors, Manassas, Va., is being awarded a $121,420,517 modification on previously awarded contract (N00024-11-C-6294) to exercise options for fiscal 2013 Acoustic Rapid Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Insertion (A-RCI) production. Bell-Boeing Joint Project Office, Amarillo, Texas, is being awarded a $26,528,819 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to a delivery order previously issued against basic ordering agreement N00019-12-G-0006. Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Sensors, Moorestown, N.J., is being awarded a contract modification (P00044) under the HQ0276-10-C-0003 contract.  The total value of this ceiling increase is $45,920,095, increasing the total contract value from $209,893,182 to $255,813,277. We still see homeless people, hungry children and currently we have more than 48 million people enrolled on food stamps and many Americans are living off less than $4 a day. Interestingly enough our Defense budget continues to grow and at what cost? The lives of our needy.

 Citations: 

Johnson, Chalmers The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004

 Hossein-Zadeh, Ismael, The Political Economy of US Militarism, Palgrave MacMillan, 2006, ISBN 978-1-4039-7285-9

Weinberger, Sharon. Imaginary Weapons. New York: Nation Books, 2006.