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Military–industrial complex

Concept in military and political science From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.[2][3][4][5] A driving factor behind the relationship between the military and the defense-minded corporations is that both sides benefit—one side from obtaining weapons, and the other from being paid to supply them.[6] 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.[7][8] The expression gained popularity after a warning of the relationship's detrimental effects, in the farewell address of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 17, 1961.[9][10]

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Protest triggered by the Assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Somerville, Massachusetts 2020.[1]

Conceptually, it is closely related to the ideas of the iron triangle in the U.S. (the three-sided relationship between Congress, the executive branch bureaucracy, and interest groups) and the defense industrial base (the network of organizations, facilities, and resources that supplies governments with defense-related goods and services).[11][12]

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History of the theory

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Popular anxiety that a ruler may lead a nation into war for his own self-interests has a long history dating to the dawn of society. This fear motivated a trend toward limited government that culminated in republicanism. Thomas Paine said of monarchies: “War is their trade, plunder and revenue their objects.” Benjamin Franklin and George Washington both favored disarmament with the latter saying in his farewell address: “Overgrown military establishments are, under any form of government, inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.” Abraham Lincoln directly questioned the Mexican-American War with his Spot Resolutions saying: “no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.” Similar criticisms were made during WWI, WWII, and the Vietnam War with widespread charges during the 1940s that Franklin D. Roosevelt “lied us into war.”[13]:17[14]:175

However, criticism of arms makers is a modern phenomenon originating in the Industrial Revolution. Armorers were well-to-do artisans in Ancient Greece and Rome through the Middle Ages in European towns known for arms making such as Toledo, Milan, Nuremberg, and Liege. But, ancient armorers remained firmly in the class of respectable artisans rather than rising to become wealthy businessmen.[14]:172–173

Four historical movements joined forces to conceive of concept now known as the military-industrial complex:[14]:173–176

  • General distrust of businessmen and broad concern with economic motives in warfare,
  • The movement to establish permanent peace through disarmament in the 17th Century promoted in America by the Quakers,
  • The debate over the sale of arms to belligerents by neutrals, also in the 17th Century, analyzed by Hugo Grotius and Emer de Vattel,
  • Public concern with the price, quality, and delivery of materiel purchased by the government during the American Revolution.

America was blessed with free security (due to its geographic isolation from rivals) starting at the end of the War of 1812 until well after WWII. This allowed the country to go without having a standing army.[15]:24 During that time, the army responded to antimilitarism by engaging positively in civil affairs. The Corps of Engineers and the Quartermaster Department were known for exploration, land surveys, and development of roads, canals, and railroads. West Point graduates became prominent engineers, factory foremen, and business executives.[16]:24–25 Military contracting was controlled exclusively by the Ordnance Department and other army agencies. However, civilian involvement in munitions planning was adopted in 1917 and with it came corporate involvement in national defense. [16]:42

From the American Revolution until the 20th century the military looked on business disdainfully and shied away from associations with it. This was partially due to shoddy performance by vendors such as those who provided groceries to servicemen until government commissaries were established. However, with time, the commissary system came to be plagued by inefficiencies caused by special interest groups.[17]:vii

Starting in the Civil War, arms production was beset by boom-bust cycles associated with war and peace that bankrupted manufacturers just at the moment when they perfected production.[16]:35[18]:1,5 Heavy industry became critical to warfare starting after the Civil War when armored naval vessels came into being.[19]:43 These factors caused the government to engage in ad hoc industrial policy to allow defense contractors to survive in an otherwise volatile and unpredictable market.[15]:7

WWI saw the creation of the War Industries Board by American businessmen for the purpose of mobilizing the economy. Conflicts of interest among the members of this board were rife, and so Woodrow Wilson, Congress, and the public viewed the War Industries Board with suspicion. The War Department initially refused to cooperate with the War Industries Board, however it became clear that the government lacked the expertise and capacity to mobilize the economy effectively. The compromise that resulted was that Wilson forced the War Department and the War Industries Board to merge. WWI revealed that industrial production was at least as important to modern warfare as tactics or strategy, and so the War Department was forced to take responsibility for planning economic mobilization in future conflicts.[17]:11 This planning proved to be valuable when WWII broke out. [17]:12

The potential for a military-industrial complex was seeded by Progressive reforms that brought government and big business closer together during the first two decades of the 20th Century.[20]:1–2 Public outcry in the wake of WWI crystallized into the merchants of death theory.[19]:43–44 The Nye Committee revealed that, while there were numerous instances of true patriotism and sacrifice in the War Industries Board, its members also had rampant conflicts of interest and engaged in questionable practices that put their personal gain ahead of the interests of the nation.[17]:11

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Incidence of the phrase military industrial complex in books

WWII was the turning point that showed a standing defense industrial base would be critical to future security.[15]:7[21]:20 President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Production Board to coordinate civilian industries and shift them into wartime production. Arms production in the U.S. went from around one percent of annual gross domestic product (GDP) to 40 percent of GDP.[22] An impending “capitalist-military oligarchy” was warned of in 1940 on the pages of the The New Republic.[13]:21,28

A pair of influential publications came out in 1941 hinting at the formation of the military-industrial complex theory. Harold Lasswell’s concept of The Garrison State, where distinctions between civil and military personal are erased by specialists in violence, shares much in common with the military-industrial complex theory’s focus on militarization of the social order.[13]:21[23]:7 James Burnham, meanwhile, predicted a managerial revolution where managers would triumph over propertied classes by transcending the means of production by setting corporate and government policies.[23]:7 A similar phrase was used in a 1947 Foreign Affairs article in a sense close to that it would later acquire.[24]

A permanent war footing to contain communist expansion was made official policy in 1950 with policy paper NSC 68.[15]:24[25]:2 However, the American ethos would not tolerate a large standing army, unlike the Soviets. This caused the American military to pursue a strategy focused on advanced technology as a force multiplier to counter the superior numerical strength of the Soviets.[15]:7

Then in 1956 C. Wright Mills published The Power Elite which contended that a democratically unaccountable class of military, business, and political leaders with convergent interests exercised the preponderance of power in the contemporary West.[26][27] The Power Elite is a benchmark for subsequent writings because it is a distillation of two major sociological traditions.[23]:4 The first posits that ruling elites, who may have power-seeking psychological traits, are governmental and political leaders who are appointed or elected. This Machiavellian tradition represented by Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca substitutes an elite/mass cleavage for the Marxist class conflict. The second views power as arising more from occupancy of top positions in governmental bureaucracy, than from the Marxist notion of power arising from capital ownership and was advocated by Max Weber.[23]:4 These Machiavellian and Weberian traditions are also apparent in Lasswell's and Burnham's 1941 writings.[23]:7

President Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the phrase military-industrial complex to the public in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:[28] However, the phrase did not rise to prominence until the national debate over the Vietnam War.[15]:21[21]:10[14]:172[29]:3 Many Vietnam War–era activists and polemicists, such as Seymour Melman and Noam Chomsky employed the concept in their criticism of U.S. foreign policy, while other academics and policymakers found it to be a useful analytical framework. Usage surged again in 1989 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[30] In 1993, the Pentagon urged defense contractors to consolidate due to the fall of communism and a shrinking defense budget.[31] The term is now sometimes imposed anachronistically on previous cases of military-industrial collaboration.[15]:23

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

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.[32] 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 elected officials.[26] 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".[26][33] Henry Giroux claims that it was originally "military–industrial–academic complex".[34] The actual authors of the speech were Eisenhower's speechwriters Ralph E. Williams and Malcolm Moos.[35]

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The MIC and the Cold War

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Attempts to conceptualize something similar to a modern "military–industrial complex" did exist before 1961, as the underlying phenomenon described by the term is generally agreed to have emerged during or shortly after World War II.[27] For example, a similar phrase was used in a 1947 Foreign Affairs article in a sense close to that it would later acquire, and sociologist C. Wright Mills contended in his 1956 book The Power Elite that a democratically unaccountable class of military, business, and political leaders with convergent interests exercised the preponderance of power in the contemporary West.[26][36][27]

Following its coinage in Eisenhower's address, the MIC became a staple of American political and sociological discourse. Many Vietnam War–era activists and polemicists, such as Seymour Melman and Noam Chomsky employed the concept in their criticism of U.S. foreign policy, while other academics and policymakers found it to be a useful analytical framework. Although the MIC was bound up in its origins with the bipolar international environment of the Cold War, some contended that the MIC might endure under different geopolitical conditions (for example, George F. Kennan wrote in 1987 that "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.").[37] The collapse of the USSR and the resultant decrease in global military spending (the so-called 'peace dividend') did in fact lead to decreases in defense industrial output and consolidation among major arms producers, although global expenditures rose again following the September 11 attacks and the ensuing "War on terror", as well as the more recent increase in geopolitical tensions associated with strategic competition between the United States, Russia, and China.[38]

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Eras

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First era

Some sources divide the history of the United States military–industrial complex into three eras.[31] From 1797 to 1941, the U.S. 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 U.S. government armed the military.

In World War II, the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Production Board to coordinate civilian industries and shift them into wartime production. Arms production in the U.S. went from around one percent of annual Gross domestic product (GDP) to 40 percent of GDP.[31] U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. include the advancement of the civilian technology market as civilian companies benefit from innovations from the MIC and vice versa.[39] In 1993, the Pentagon urged defense contractors to consolidate due to the fall of communism and a shrinking defense budget.[31]

Third era

In the third era, U.S. 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 U.S. domestic economy is now tied 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.[40] Shifts in values and the collapse of communism have ushered in a new era for the U.S. 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] In recent years, traditional defense contracting firms have faced competition from Silicon Valley and other tech companies, like Anduril Industries and Palantir,[41] over Pentagon contracts. This represents a shift in defense strategy away from the procurement of more armaments and toward an increasing role of technologies like cloud computing and cybersecurity in military affairs.[42] From 2019 to 2022, venture capital funding for defense technologies doubled.[43]

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Military subsidy theory

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According to the military subsidy theory, the Cold War–era mass production of aircraft benefited the U.S. 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 U.S. 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.[44]

More information Country, % GDP spent on military ...
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Current applications

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According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), total world spending on military expenses in 2022 was $2.240 trillion. 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.[48] 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.[49]

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.[50] This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department's budget. Overall, the U.S. federal government is spending about $1 trillion annually on military-related purposes.[51]

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."[52] The U.S. military and arms industry also tend to contribute heavily to incumbent members of Congress.[53]

U.S. President Joe Biden signed a record $886 billion defense spending bill into law on December 22, 2023.[54]

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Political geography

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The 20 largest US defense contractors as of 2022 ranked by their defense revenue[55]

The datagraphic represents the 20 largest US defense contractors based on the amount of their defense revenue. Among these corporations, 53.5% of total revenues are derived from defense, and the median proportion is 63.4%; 6 firms derive over 75% of their revenue from defense. According to the Wikipedia entries for the companies, the headquarters of 11 of these corporations are located in the Washington metropolitan area, of which 5 are in Reston, Virginia.

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Similar concepts

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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."[56]

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:[57]: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.[57]

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.[59]

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".[60] Ray McGovern extended this appellation to Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex, MICIMATT.[61]

Tech–industrial complex

In his 2025 farewell address, outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden warned of a 'tech–industrial complex', stating that "Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power."[62] Commentators noted that this statement was made following Elon Musk's upcoming role in the second Donald Trump administration and public overtures towards Trump by technology industry leaders including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, including the dismantling of Facebook's fact-checking program.[63][64][65]

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See also

Literature and media
Other complexes or axes
Miscellaneous
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References

Further reading

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