MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

President Dwight Eisenhower famously referred to the "military-industrial complex" in his farewell address.

The term 'military-industrial complex' (MIC) refers to a close and symbiotic relationship among a nation's armed forces, its private industry, and associated political and commercial interests. In such a system, the military is dependent on industry to supply material and other support, while the defense industry depends on government for revenue.
The term is most often used in reference to the United States, where it gained popularity after its use in the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. As pejorative terms, the "MIC" or the "iron triangle" refer to an institutionalised collusion among defense contractors (industry), The Pentagon (military), and the United States government (Congress, Executive branch), as a cartel that works against the public interest, and whose motivation is profiteering.
The sociologist C. Wright Mills had in the book ''The Power Elite'', described how an elite consisting of men from the higher circles of Economic, Military and Political order were the real rulers, beyond democratic control.
In an earlier draft of this farewell address, term read military-industrial-congressional complex. When Congressional leaders saw it, they requested that he remove 'Congressional' and Eisenhower did.

History

Origin of the term

Cultural references

History

According to historian William H. McNeill, the 2nd modern MICs arose in Britain and France in the 1880s and 1890s. The naval rivalry between these two powers was of utmost significance in the fermentation, growth and development of these MICs. Conversely, the existence of these two nations' respective MICs may have been the source of these military tensions. Officers like John Fisher influenced the shift toward faster technological integration (which meant closer relationships with private, innovative companies). Similar MICs soon followed in nations like Germany, Japan, and the United States.
Industrialists who played a part in the arms industry of this era included Alfred Krupp, Samuel Colt, William Armstrong, Alfred Nobel, and Joseph Whitworth.
Technology has always been a part of warfare. Neolithic tools were used as weapons before recorded history. The bronze age and iron age saw the rise of complex industries geared towards the manufacture of weaponry. These industries also had practical peacetime applications, as well. However, it was not until the 19th or 20th century that military weaponry became sufficiently complicated as to require a large subset of industrial effort solely dedicated to warfare. Firearms, artillery, steamships, and later aircraft and nuclear weapons were markedly different from medieval swords -- these new weapons required years of specialized labor, as opposed to part-time effort. Furthermore, the length of time necessary to build large weapons required pre-planning and construction even during times of peace. This trend of coupling some industries towards military activity gave rise to the concept of a "partnership" between the military and private enterprise.
In the case of the United States, it is difficult to estimate the degree of dependence of the U.S. economy on its military and defense spending, but it is clearly enormous, and legislators fiercely resist defense cuts that affect their districts. In Washington State, an economist estimated in 2002 that in Western Washington 166,000 jobs, or about 15% of the workforce, depended directly or indirectly on military installations alone, not counting defense industries. In Washington State overall in FY2001, about $7.06 billion arrived in U.S. Department of Defense payroll, pensions, and procurement contracts—and Washington State was only seventh among the fifty states in this regard.
Sustaining political support for the military-industrial complex has been a challenge for political élites. In 1977, after the Vietnam war and the Watergate crisis, President Jimmy Carter began his presidency with what historian Michael Sherry has called "a determination to break from America's militarized past" (''In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s'' [New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1995], p. 342). But the so-called "Reagan Revolution" successfully restored the preeminence of the military-industrial complex. By linking what Hugh Heclo of George Mason University has called a sacramental vision of America with the defense establishment, Reagan cloaked the nation and its national security state in the mantle of the Protestant covenant theology in a way that has become since the 1980s a shibboleth of the Republican Party—and of large parts of the Democratic Party as well.

Origin of the term

The first public use of the term was by the Union of Democratic Control, formed by Sir Charles Trevelyan in the United Kingdom on 5 August 1914. Point Four of their pacifist manifesto declared: 4. National armaments should be limited by mutual agreement, and the pressures of the military-industrial complex regulated by the nationalisation of armaments firms and control over the arms trade.^[1]
President of the United States (and former General of the Army) Dwight D. Eisenhower later used the term in his on January 17, 1961:
In the penultimate draft of the address, Eisenhower initially used the term ''military-industrial-congressional complex'', and thus indicated the essential role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry. But, it is said, that the president chose to strike the word ''congressional'' in order to placate members of the legislative branch of the federal government. The actual authors of the term were Eisenhower's speech-writers Ralph Williams and Malcolm Moos.^[2]
Vietnam War-era activists, such as Seymour Melman, referred frequently to the concept. In the late 1990s James Kurth asserted: "by the mid-1980s the term had largely fallen out of public discussion... whatever the power of arguments about the influence of the military-industrial complex on weapons procurement during the Cold War, they are much less relevant to the current era."
Contemporary students and critics of American militarism continue to refer to and employ the term, however. For example, historian Chalmers Johnson uses words from the second, third, and fourth paragraphs quoted above from Eisenhower's address as an epigraph to Chapter Two ("The Roots of American Militarism") of a recent volume^[3] on this subject. Peter W. Singer's book concerning private military companies illustrates contemporary ways in which industry, particularly an information-based one, still interacts with the U.S. Government and the Pentagon.^[4]
The expressions permanent war economy and war corporatism are related concepts that have also been used in association with this term.
The term is also used to describe comparable collusion in other political entities such as the German Empire (prior to and through the first world war), Britain, France and (post-Soviet) Russia.

Cultural references

★ The concept of the military-industrial complex was heavily examined in the 2005 documentary ''Why We Fight''.

★ President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address is featured at the beginning of the 1991 film ''JFK''.

★ The Eisenhower farewell address footage is used in a trailer for the video game Army of Two.

★ A select portion of the speech is included in the song End of Days (Part 2) by the band Ministry on their final studio album The Last Sucker.

Sources

★ DeGroot, Gerard J. ''Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War'', 144, London & New York: Longman, 1996, ISBN 0-582-06138-5

★ Eisenhower, Dwight D. ''Public Papers of the Presidents'', 1035-40. 1960.

★ ________. "Farewell Address." In ''The Annals of America''. Vol. 18. ''1961-1968: The Burdens of World Power'', 1-5. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1968.

★ ________. , 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, 2004

★ Kurth, James. "Military-Industrial Complex." In ''The Oxford Companion to American Military History'', ed. John Whiteclay Chambers II, 440-42. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

★ Nelson, Lars-Erik. "Military-Industrial Man." In ''New York Review of Books'' 47, no. 20 (Dec. 21, 2000): 6.

★ Nieburg, H. L. ''In the Name of Science'', Quadrangle Books, 1970

★ Mills, C.Wright."Power Elite", New York,1956

Notes

1. DeGroot, Gerard J. Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War, 144, London & New York: Longman, 1996, ISBN 0-582-06138-5
2. Griffin, Charles "New Light on Eisenhower's Farewell Address," in Presidential Studies Quarterly 22 (Summer 1992): 469-479
3. The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004. p. 39
4. Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.

External links

★ Flows of Money and Patronage (from Washington Truth in Recruiting)

★

★ National priorities project chart showing how your federal income tax is spent

★ Open Secrets: Top Defense Contributors to Federal Candidates and Parties database

★ Quotes on Money and Banking and Militarism

★ Schema-root.org: military industry Many military industry topics, each with a current news feed

★ War Resisters: Piechart and info on defense spending

★ Why We Fight : A Film by Eugene Jarecki exploring the effects of living with an MIC

★ www.dod.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2006 Budget information.

★ www.MilitaryIndustrialComplex.com Features running daily, weekly and monthly defense spending totals plus Contract Archives section.

This article provided by Wikipedia. To edit the contents of this article, click here for original source.

	Comfort Suites
	Holiday Market Travel
	Walden Tours
	Sheraton Suites Philadelphia Airport
	Tauck World Discovery

	Cobblers Cove
	Sheraton Princess Kaiulani
	Sheraton Philadelphia University City
	Sheraton Bucks County Hotel
	Tauck World Discovery
	Fallsview Casino Resort
	Golden Gate Casino
	Caesars Windsor
	Sheraton Harrisburg Hershey Hotel
	Sheraton Society Hill

	Tips for Toronto Travellers: Fly Cheap from Buffalo Airport
	Celebrating Thanksgiving & the Harvest All Over the World
	First Gay Heli Ski Week Launched by Canadian Mountain Holidays
	Lake Elementaita: Retreat to a Paradise of Flamingoes in Kenya
	10 Tips Every Business Traveller Should Know
	Celebrate Rabbie Burns & Culture at Homecoming Scotland 2009

Home

Blogs

Trip Deals

Hotel Deals

Jobs

Videos

Articles

Directory

Languages

MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

History

Origin of the term

Cultural references

See also

Sources

Notes

Further reading

External links

Customer Service

Most Popular

Useful

Find

	Eisenhower 's TV Warning about "Military Industrial Complex"
	Eisenhower about the "Military-industrial complex" - German subs
	Dwight D. Eisenhower über den "Military-industrial complex"

Username:	Password:

	or Sign up here