Abstract
In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans to prevent the growth of a military-industrial complex that threatened to undermine their economic dynamism and political freedom. Two years later, the former four-star general and president elaborated his views:
No matter how much we spend for arms, there is no safety in arms alone. Our security is the total product of our economic, intellectual, moral, and military strengths … there is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security — but it can easily bankrupt itself, morally and economically, in attempting to reach that illusory goal through arms alone. The military establishment, not productive itself, necessarily must feed on the energy, productivity, and brainpower of the country, and if it takes too much our total strength declines.3
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, who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children.
Dwight Eisenhower1
The whole army and navy are unproductive labourers. They are the servants of the public, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people. Their service, how honourable … produces nothing for which an equal number of services can afterward be produced.
Adam Smith2
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Notes
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library, 1937), p. 315.
Among prominent books on the subject, see: C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956);
Walter Millis, Arms and Men: A Study in American Military History (New York: Putnam, 1956);
Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and State: The Theory and Practice of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1957);
Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York: Putnam, 1960);
Carroll W. Pursell (ed.), The Military-Industrial Complex (New York: Harper & Row, 1972);
Sam C. Sarkesian (ed.), The Military-Industrial Complex: A Reassessment (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1972);
Steven Rosen (ed.), Testing the Theory of the Military-Industrial Complex (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973);
Stuart H. Loory, Defeated: Inside America’s Military Machine (New York: Random House, 1973);
Robert K. Griffith, The Military-Industrial Complex: A Historical Perspective (New York: Praeger, 1980);
Gordon Adams, The Iron Triangle: The Politics of Defense Contracting (New York: Council of Economic Priorities, 1981);
Ann Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Harlan K. Ullman, In Irons: US Military Might in the New Century (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1995), pp. 169, 34.
Russell Weigley, The American Way of War. A History of the United States Military Strategy and Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 378–81, 394.
Tom Gervasi, The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).
William D. Hartung, And Weapons for All: How America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Arms Trade Warps our Foreign Policy and Subverts Democracy at Home (New York: HarperCollins, 1994); William D. Hartung, “The Phantom Profits of the War Trade,” New York Times, March 6, 1994.
Harry Mingos, “Birth of an Industry,” in G. R. Simonson (ed.), The History of the American Aircraft Industry (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968), pp. 43–4.
Michael Michaud, Reaching for the High Frontier: The American Pro-Space Movement, 1972–1984), p. 12; Mary Holman, The Political Economy of the Space Program (Palo Alto, Calif.: Pacific Books, 1974), and The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
For a highly readable account of the early space program, see Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1979).
Laura Tyson, Who’s Bashing Whom? Trade Conflict in High-Technology Industries (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1992), p. 170.
S. L. Carrol, “The Market for Commercial Aircraft,” in R. E. Caves and M. J. Roberts (eds), Regulating the Market (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1975), pp. 145–69.
David Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg, “The Commercial Aircraft Industry,” in Richard Nelson (ed.), Government and Technical Progress: A Cross-Industry Analysis (New York: Pergamon Press, 1982), pp. 101–61.
Office of Technology Assessment, Competing Economies: America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, October 1991); Testimony of J. Michael Farren, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, before the Joint Economic Committee, February 27, 1992; John Tagliabue, “Airbus Tries to Fly in a New Formation,” New York Times, May 2, 1996.
Jeff Shear, The Keys to the Kingdom: The FSX Deal and the Selling of America’s Future (New York: Doubleday, 1994).
Theodore H. Moran and David C. Mowery, “Aerospace and National Security in an Era of Globalization,” CCC Working Papers, 91–2 (Berkeley: Center for Research and Management, University of California, 1991); Warren Leary, “Civilian Uses are Proposed for Satellites,” New York Times, May 31, 1995.
Robert W. DeGrasses, Military Expansions, Economic Decline: The Impact of Military Spending on US Economic Performance (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1983), pp. 223–9.
See also, Marion Anderson, Jeb Brugmann and George Erickcek, “The Price of the Pentagon: The Industrial and Commercial Impact of the 1981 Military Budget” (Lansing, Mich.: Employment Research Associates, 1982);
John Zysman, “US Power, Trade, and Technology,” International Affairs, 67: 1 (1991), pp. 81–106; Richard Stubbing and Richard Mendel, “How to Save $50 Billion a Year,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1989, p. 53;
J. A. Stockfish, Plowshares Into Swords: Managing the Defense Establishment (New York: Mason and Lipscomb, 1973).
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© 1997 William R. Nester
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Nester, W.R. (1997). Weapons and Spaceships: The Military-Industrial Complex. In: American Industrial Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25568-9_5
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