The Eisenhower warning about the Military-Industrial Complex is alive and well....
What liberals have said and continue to say about the Eisenhower speech isn't merely wrong, it's an egregious lie not too different from what they say about Trump's speeches. The only difference is that they have recast Eisenhower as a spinner of left-wing platitudes, whereas Trump is depicted as Bull Connor and George Wallace rolled into one. Re the military industrial complex, the point Eisenhower was trying to make was actually that the country needs one.
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.Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
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 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 unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial 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.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
The subtext, which Eisenhower did not mention, since it was a speech and not an essay on strategy, is that war moves a lot faster than it used to, and until recently, this was within living memory. During WWI, the parties went back and forth over the same stretch of land for 4 years, and ended the war with a truce at border lines dozens of miles from where they started. During WWII, Germany overran France within 46 days.
Eisenhower routinely signed defense budgets that came up to 10% of national output, so it's probably a given that he did not see that proportion of national income going to defense as unreasonable. As illustrated from the graph below, that proportion is now about 4%, well below what Ike routinely approved.
But the meat of that speech was actually Ike's warning, in a general way, about the growth of government. It would surprise him today that this growth, as a % of national output, has come entirely in non-defense spending:
In Ike's era, defense was perhaps 40 cents out of every dollar of government spending. It is now 11 cents.