Dwight David Eisenhower & the Military Industrial Complex

The name Dwight David Eisenhower ranks among America’s top generals of all time. “Ike” was born and raised in Abilene, Kansas, and after graduating from West Point, he rose to be the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (effectively in command of the European Theater and the invasion on D-Day) that began and completed the destruction of Nazi Germany in World War II. Ike went on to take on many varied roles, from Supreme NATO Commander to President of Columbia University. Courted by both the Republican and Democratic parties, Ike eventually succumbed to pressure to run for President, and at aged 62, running under the Republican banner, Ike began his service as our 34^th President, from 1953 through 1961.

Ike’s tenure as president included creating the single most comprehensive American infrastructure project, linking the entire United States through a system of super-highways (now known at the Interstate system), ostensibly as a national security measure, under the name of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. He was President when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, and he led this nation to accelerate its own space program. He also had a greater awareness of things military than perhaps any other President in the 20^th century, and what he saw actually terrified him.

Ike understood that World War II had put into motion a new economic and political force that threatened to reshape the nation; he foresaw how military priorities could negatively impact what he believed was a strong, egalitarian and democratic nation, leaving it vulnerable to greedy companies seeking to make their fortune in military manufactures that the United States, in his opinion, truly did not need. His fear was that if left unchecked, this “military industrial complex” would create a ruling elite that would distort America and her principals. I wonder how he would react if he knew that the United States currently accounts for between 44% and 47% (Wikipedia) of all military expenditures on earth. His worst fears appear to have been realized as senior Republicans and Democrats today rail at the mere thought of serious Pentagon budget cuts as somehow threatening to our national security.

I would like Ike to speak, in his own words, since there is no way I could say it any better. Below are excerpts from two seminal Eisenhower speeches, taken from opposite ends of his Presidency:

Addressing the American Society of Newspaper editors in May of 1953, President Eisenhower spoke these words:

Every gun that is made, 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.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

In January 1961, just days before the end of his term as President, Eisenhower issued these words of warning in his farewell speech:

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 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.

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.

I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps our electorate and those seeking to obtain or hold public office would be well-served to take Ike’s words very, very seriously in a world where the level of our own military expenditures is clearly no longer sustainable.