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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Bacevich2009">Template:Cite book</ref> A driving factor behind the relationship between the military and the defense corporations is that both sides benefit—one side from obtaining weapons, and the other from being paid to supply them. 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 Department of Defense, and politicians.<ref name="npr">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>"SIPRI Year Book 2008; Armaments, Disarmaments and International Security" Oxford University Press 2008 Template:ISBN</ref> The expression gained popularity after a warning of the relationship's harmful effects, in the farewell address of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961.<ref name="Held1999">Template:Cite book</ref> The term has also been used in relation to Russia, especially since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Origin of the term

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U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower used the term in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:

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The phrase was thought to have been "war-based" industrial complex before becoming "military", a claim passed on only by oral history.<ref name="ledbetter" />^:111 Geoffrey Perret, in his biography of Eisenhower, claims that in one draft of the speech, the phrase was "military–industrial–congressional complex", indicating the role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry, but the word "congressional" was dropped from the final version.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> James Ledbetter calls this a "stubborn misconception" not supported by any evidence.<ref name="Ledbetter">Template:Cite web</ref> The actual authors of the speech were Eisenhower's speechwriters Ralph E. Williams and Malcolm Moos.<ref>Griffin, Charles "New Light on Eisenhower's Farewell Address", in Presidential Studies Quarterly 22 (Summer 1992): 469–479</ref>

While the term military-industrial complex is often ascribed to Eisenhower, he was neither the first to use the phrase, nor the first to warn of such a potential danger.<ref name="ledbetter"> Template:Cite book </ref>Template:Rp 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.<ref name="Brunton 1988 599–606">Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref name="Ledbetter"/><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Brunton 1988 599–606"/>

United States

Template:American imperialism Some sources divide the history of the United States military–industrial complex into three eras.<ref name=":12">Template:Cite journal</ref>

First era

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.<ref name=":12" /> U.S. companies, such as Boeing and General Motors, maintained and expanded their defense divisions.<ref name=":12" /> These companies have gone on to develop various technologies that have improved civilian life as well, such as night-vision goggles and GPS.<ref name=":12" />

Second era (Cold War)

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.

The phrase rose to prominence in the years following Eisenhower's farewell address, as part of opposition to the Vietnam War.<ref name="roland"> Template:Cite book </ref>Template:Rp<ref name="cooling-ropp"> Template:Cite book </ref>Template:Rp John Kenneth Galbraith said that he and others quoted Eisenhower's farewell address for the "flank protection it provided" when criticizing military power given Eisenhower's "impeccably conservative" reputation.<ref name="pursell-galbraith"> Template:Cite book </ref>Template:Rp

Following Eisenhower's address, the term 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.").<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The collapse of the Soviet Union 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.<ref>Nicastro, Luke. The U.S. Defense Industrial Base: Background and Issues for Congress. Congressional Research Service. October 12, 2023. Pp. 4-5. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47751</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1993, the Pentagon urged defense contractors to consolidate due to the fall of communism and a shrinking defense budget.<ref name=":12" />

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.<ref name=":12" /> 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref name=":12" /> In recent years, traditional defense contracting firms have faced competition from Silicon Valley and other tech companies, like Anduril Industries and Palantir,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> From 2019 to 2022, venture capital funding for defense technologies doubled.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Military subsidy theory

A debate exists between two schools of thought concerning the effect of U.S. military spending on U.S. civilian industry. Eugene Gholz of UT Austin said that Cold War military spending on aircraft, electronics, communications, and computers has been credited with indirect technological and financial benefits for the associated civilian industries. This contrasts with the idea that military research threatens to crowd out commercial innovation. Gholz said that the U.S. government intentionally overpaid for military aircraft to hide a subsidy to the commercial aircraft industry. He presents development of the military Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker alongside the Boeing 707 civilian jetliner as the canonical example of this idea. However, he said that the actual benefits that accrued to the Boeing 707 from the KC-135 program were minimal and that Boeing's image as an arms maker hampered commercial sales. He said that Convair's involvement in military aircraft led it to make disastrous decisions on the commercial side of its business. Gholz concluded that military spending fails to explain the competitiveness of the American commercial aircraft industry.<ref name="Gholz" />

Connotations in U.S. politics

James Ledbetter and certain other scholars describe the phrase military–industrial complex as pejorative.<ref name="ledbetter 6-7" /><ref name="roland 2" /><ref name="brandes 6" /> Some scholars suggest that it implies the existence of a conspiracy.<ref name="roland 22" /><ref name="brandes 276" /><ref name="cooling-sunseri 158" /> David S. Rohde compares its use in U.S. politics by liberals to that of the phrase deep state by conservatives.<ref name="rhode iv" /><ref name="green" /><ref name="gross" /> Ledbetter further describes the phrase:<ref name="ledbetter 5-6" />

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Russia

Template:Further Russia's military-industrial complex is overseen by the Military-Industrial Commission of Russia. Template:As of, Russia's military-industrial complex is made up of about 6,000 companies and employs about 3.5 million people, or 2.5% of the population.<ref name="Guardian Russia">Template:Cite news</ref> In 2025, nearly 40% of Russian government spending will be on national defense and security.<ref name="Guardian Russia" /> This record-high allocation of 13.5 trillion rubles ($133.63 billion) is more than the spending allocated to education, healthcare, social programs and economic development.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Russia ramped-up weapons production following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and factories making ammunition and military equipment have been running around the clock. Andrei Chekmenyov, the head of the Russian Union of Industrial Workers, said that "practically all military-industrial enterprises" were requiring workers to work additional hours "without their consent", to sustain Russia's war machine.<ref name="Guardian Russia" /> In January 2023, Russia's president Vladimir Putin said that Russia's large military-industrial complex would ensure its victory over Ukraine.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

According to Philip Luck of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Russia's war against Ukraine has "created a new class of economic beneficiaries—industries and individuals profiting from the war—who now have a vested interest in sustaining Putin's war economy".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann refers to this as a new "military-industrial class" whose welfare depends on the continuation of the war.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Likewise, Luke Cooper of the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform writes that "Russia has created a rent-based military industrial complex whose elites have an interest in large scale military spending". He says that while this military-industrial complex would have an incentive to oppose peace negotiations, "it seems plausible that the militarisation of the economy would remain a priority in a post-war situation regardless", justified by the "threat" from the West.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

However, Russia's military-industrial complex has been severely hindered by international sanctions and by the demands of the war in Ukraine. This has highlighted Russia's dependence on Western components. Although Russia has bypassed some sanctions, and its military industry is resilient, this is not sustainable for long.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Similar terms

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A related term is "defense industrial base" – the network of organizations, facilities, and resources that supplies governments with defense-related goods and services.<ref>Nicastro, Luke. The U.S. Defense Industrial Base: Background and Issues for Congress. Congressional Research Service. October 12, 2023. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47751</ref> Another related term is the "iron triangle" in the U.S. – the three-sided relationship between Congress, the executive branch bureaucracy, and interest groups.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

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 governments' ties to heavy industry. It would 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."<ref>Pursell, C. (1972). The military–industrial complex. Harper & Row Publishers, New York, New York.</ref> 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.

In The Global Industrial Complex, edited by American philosopher and activist Steven Best, the "power complex" first analyzed by sociologist Charles Wright Mills 1956 work The Power Elite, is shown to have evolved into a global array of "corporate-state" structures, an interdependent and overlapping systems of domination.<ref name="Best2011">Template:Cite book</ref>

Matthew Brummer, associate professor at Tokyo's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, has pointed out in 2016 Japan's "Manga Military" to denote the effort undertaken by the country's Ministry of Defense, using film, anime, theater, literature, fashion, and other, along with moe, to reshape domestic and international perceptions of the Japanese military-industrial complex.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

James Der Derian's book Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network relates the convergence of cyborg technologies, video games, media spectacles, war movies, and "do-good ideologies" into what generates a mirage, as he claims, of high-tech, and low-risk "virtuous wars."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> American political activist and former Central Intelligence Agency officer Ray McGovern denounces the fact that, as he claims, American citizens are vulnerable to anti-Russian propaganda since few of them know the Soviet Union's major role in World War II victory, and blames for this the "corporate-controlled mainstream media." He goes on to label the culprits as the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex.<ref name="consortium news">Template:Cite news</ref>

In the decades of the term's inception, other industrial complexes appeared in the literature:<ref name="Best2011"/>Template:Rp

Animal–industrial complex;<ref name="Nibert2011">Template:Cite book</ref>
Prison–industrial complex;
Pharmaceutical–industrial complex;
Entertainment-industrial complex;
Medical–industrial complex;
Corporate consumption complex.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

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."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The statement was made following Elon Musk's appointment in the second Donald Trump administration and the public overtures towards Trump by technology industry leaders, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, as well as the dismantling of Facebook's fact-checking program.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

References

Citations

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Sources

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DeGroot, Gerard J. Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War, 144, London & New York: Longman, 1996, Template:ISBN
Eisenhower, Dwight D. Public Papers of the Presidents, 1035–1040. 1960.
Eisenhower, Dwight D. "Farewell Address." In The Annals of America. Vol. 18. 1961–1968: The Burdens of World Power, 1–5. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1968.
Eisenhower, Dwight D. President Eisenhower's Farewell Address, Wikisource.
Hartung, William D. "Eisenhower's Warning: The Military–Industrial Complex Forty Years Later." World Policy Journal 18, no. 1 (Spring 2001).
Johnson, Chalmers The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004Template:ISBN?
Kurth, James. "Military–Industrial Complex." In The Oxford Companion to American Military History, ed. John Whiteclay Chambers II, 440–442. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Template:ISBN?
Mills, C. Wright."Power Elite", New York, 1956
Nelson, Lars-Erik. "Military–Industrial Man." In New York Review of Books 47, no. 20 (December 21, 2000): 6.
Nieburg, H. L. In the Name of Science, Quadrangle Books, 1970 Template:ISBN?

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External links

Template:Wikisource Template:Wikiquote File:Eisenhower's "Military-Industrial Complex" Speech Origins and Significance.webm

Khaki capitalism, The Economist, December 3, 2011
C. Wright Mills, Structure of Power in American Society, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 9. No. 1 1958
Dwight David Eisenhower, Farewell Address On the military–industrial complex and the government–universities collusion – January 17, 1961
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address As delivered transcript and complete audio from AmericanRhetoric.com
William McGaffin and Erwin Knoll, The military–industrial complex, An analysis of the phenomenon written in 1969
The Cost of War & Today's Military Industrial Complex, National Public Radio, January 8, 2003.
Human Rights First; Private Security Contractors at War: Ending the Culture of Impunity (2008)
Fifty Years After Eisenhower's Farewell Address, A Look at the Military–Industrial Complex – video report by Democracy Now!
Online documents, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
50th Anniversary of Eisenhower's Farewell Address – Eisenhower Institute
Part 1 – Anniversary Discussion of Eisenhower's Farewell Address – Gettysburg College
Part 2 – Anniversary Discussion of Eisenhower's Farewell Address – Gettysburg College

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Military–industrial complex

Contents

Origin of the term

United States

First era

Second era (Cold War)

Third era

Military subsidy theory

Connotations in U.S. politics

Russia

Similar terms

Tech–industrial complex

See also

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading

External links

Navigation menu

Military–industrial complex

Origin of the term

United States

First era

Second era (Cold War)

Third era

Military subsidy theory

Connotations in U.S. politics

Russia

Similar terms

Tech–industrial complex

See also

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading

External links

Navigation menu

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