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THE U.S. MILITARY INDUSTRIAL

COMPLEX A Diagrammatic Representation

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Introduction

When the speech writers of President Dwight D. Eisenhower came up with the term “military industrial complex” (for his farewell to the nation address that he delivered on January 17, 1961) to describe the militarization of U.S. democracy by the military ma-chine it would not be surprising if many among his audience nationwide consid-ered his warning as nothing more than a hyperbolic gesture. The relevant quote from that speech that those with an interest in this topic are very famil-iar with is nevertheless worthy of reproducing here given its ever-increasing relevance today.

We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military es-tablishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experi-ence. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every State house, 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 unwarrant-ed influence, whether sought or un-sought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disas-trous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination en-danger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowl-edgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industri-al and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

But what exactly is the military industrial complex? In brief, it is, as the name sug-gests, a conglomerate of weapons manufac-turers, logistics suppliers, and services providers (from torture to intelligence gath-ering) that sit at the heart of a tax-payer funded web of money-making deals and democratically corrosive political influence and before which everything else, in terms of budgetary and societal priorities, is in thrall. Some seven decades or so later, to suggest that the use of this descriptively most apt term was prophetic would be an understatement. What is more, with the invention of the strate-gy of permanent war, on the occasion of the horrendous 9/11 tragedy, by that most unholy of triumvi-rates in modern U.S. history, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W. Bush, Jr., has made this mil-

itary machine a more than a solid fixture in the way in which foreign pol-icy decisions are arrived at and how the federal budget is apportioned to-day—especially in light of the fact that a relatively new and voraciously dollar-hungry branch has been added to the military industrial complex: that which is headed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and called the “Intelligence Community.” The most tragic irony of this most unhealthy development in the modern history of United States is that to the vast majority of the U.S. population any mention of the term “military industrial complex” would,

most likely, elicit a puzzled look at best (or at worst an erroneously “knowing” suggestion that it refers to the military of the former Soviet Union) given its relative absence, perhaps understandably, as a topic of discussion in the corporate mass media. The corrupting influence of the military industrial complex on U.S. democracy was best captured by Eisenhower himself several years earlier in a speech broadcast to the nation but delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, on April 16, 1953 titled “Chance for Peace.”

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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signi-fies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hun-ger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending mon-ey alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Un-der the cloud of threaten-ing war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

In the end, Eisenhower, despite his publicly stated misgiv-ings was unable (or unwilling?) to stop the military industri-al complex from continuing to expand by leaps and bounds against the backdrop of the absolutely unnecessary Cold War; and, of course, it has never stopped growing to the enormously unconscionable detriment of the quality of life of all within United States. However, it is not just the U.S. citizenry who are negatively affected by the U.S. military industrial complex, millions of people outside the United States as well (especially people of color) are paying a heavy price too: in terms of misuse of finan-cial resources that can go toward assisting them with meaningful economic develop-ment in their less developed countries; in terms of the supply of weaponry to their governments who are, quite often, for all intents and purposes, corrupt gangs of kleptocratic thugs who have absolutely no regard for the welfare of their people as long as they can get their few pieces of silver; and in terms of U.S. engineered wars and invasions targeting their countries. Consider the unprecedented number of U.S. military interventions abroad since the Second World War; here is a sam-pling (based on a list maintained by Professor Zoltán Grossman at http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html ): Greece, 1947-1949;

Philippines, 1948-1954; Puerto Rico, 1950; Ko-rea, 1951-1953; Iran, 1953; Guatemala, 1954; Lebanon, 1958; Panama, 1958; Vietnam, 1960-1975; Cuba, 1961; Laos, 1962; Iraq, 1963; Panama, 1964; Indonesia, 1965; Dominican Republic, 1965-1966; Guatemala, 1966-1967; Cambo-dia, 1969-1975; Oman, 1970; Laos, 1971-1973; Chile, 1973; Cambodia, 1975; Angola, 1976-1992; Iran, 1980; Libya, 1981; El Salvador, 1981-1992; Nicaragua, 1981-1990; Lebanon, 1982-1984; Iran, 1984; Libya, 1986; Bolivia, 1986; Iran, 1987-1988; Libya, 1989; Virgin Islands,

1989; Panama, 1989-?; Saudi Arabia, 1990-1991; Iraq, 1990-1991; Ku-wait, 1991; Somalia, 1992-1994; Yugoslavia, 1992-1994; Haiti, 1994; Zaire (DRC) 1996-1997; Sudan, 1998; Afghanistan, 1998; Iraq, 1998; Yugoslavia, 1999; Afghanistan, 2001-?; Yemen, 2002; Philippines, 2002-?; Colombia, 2003-?; Iraq, 2003-2011; Liberia, 2003; Haiti, 2004-2005; Pakistan, 2005-?; Somalia, 2006-?; Yemen, 2009-?; Iraq-2014-?; Syria, 2014-? Go through this list again. Do you think race and racism may also be at play here? One thing is for sure, however, war is another source of profit for the capitalist class while the children of the lower classes, as sol-

diers, do most of the dying in this enterprise. Yet, the tragedy is that, as usual, the masses are asleep at the wheel; completely oblivious at how cancerous the military industrial complex has become in the body of U.S. political economy. The best way to appreciate this development is to untangle its many different strands that corruptly weave together money and political influence and in which the beneficiaries are primarily the merchants of death: the weapons manufacturers (and the losers are not just the U.S. citizenry but humanity itself). The diagram below aims to do just that.

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KEY

Billions / millions of dollars

Influence on decision-making (or reporting) Budget Jobs Foreign governments purchase armaments and/or receive

free military aid from the U.S. The U.S. Supreme Court, more often than not, decides cases in favor of

the military industrial complex. Upon leaving employment with the DOD, some go to work for the military

contractors as consultants and lobbyists—the same applies to some Congressmen and members of the Congressional Staff. (Clearly, the system is corrupt.)

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THE U.S. MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

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TAXES

The U.S. military budget totals more than

the combined military budgets of the next

5 or 6 top spenders in the world. Domes-

tically, both the military and intelligence

budgets together equals about 50% of

the entire federal budget!

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MATERIALS FOR

FURTHER READING

If you would like to explore further the themes/issues

presented in this document, you are encouraged to

consult some of the materials listed below.

Chomsky, Noam, Peter R. Mitchell, and John Schoeffel. 2002. Understanding Pow-er: the Indispensable Chomsky. New York, NY: New Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 2015. Because We Say So. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.

Goodman, Melvin A. 2013. Na-tional Insecurity: the Cost of American Militarism. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.

Johnson, Chalmers A. 2004. Blowback: the Costs and Consequences of American Empire. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Koistinen, Paul A. C. 2012. State of War: the Political Economy of American Warfare, 1945-2011. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

Ledbetter, James. 2011. Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Martin, Geoff, and Erin Steuter. 2010. Pop Culture goes to War: Enlisting and Resisting Militarism in the War on Terror. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.

Mehta, Vijay. 2012. The Economics of Killing: How the West Fuels War and Pov-erty in the Developing World. London: Pluto Press.

Pavelec, Sterling Michael. 2010. The Mili-tary-Industrial Complex and American So-ciety. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO.

Reveron, Derek S., and Judith Stiehm. 2013. Inside Defense: Understanding the U.S. Military in the 21st Century. Basing-stoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmil-lan.

Risen, James. 2014. Pay any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless war. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Stander, Simon. 2014. Why War: Capitalism and the Nation-State. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

Gutsche, Robert E. 2015. Media Control: News as an Institution of Power and Social Control. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Aca-demic.

Scott, Peter Dale. 2010. American war machine: deep politics, the CIA global drug connection, and the road to Afghan-istan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

United States, Dianne Feinstein, and John McCain. 2015. The official Senate report on CIA torture: Committee study of the Cen-tral Intelligence Agency's Detention and In-terrogation Program. New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing.

Vitalis, Robert. 2015. White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of Ameri-can International Relations. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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