James Ledbetter: The World According to Dwight
[James Ledbetter is the editor in charge of Reuters.com, and author of Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex, to be published in January by Yale University Press.]
This January marks the fiftieth anniversary of Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address, the speech that launched the phrase “military-industrial complex” into the English language. It will no doubt be an occasion for critics of military spending to decry not only massive wartime expenditures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also nuclear-weapons programs that have outlived their original targets, and burgeoning weapons sales abroad. Indeed, it has become fashionable in recent years—for example, in the 2005 documentary Why We Fight—to draw a straight line from Eisenhower’s warning about the “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” to the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s, through to the antiwar opponents of George W. Bush.
Those historical associations have their place. They risk distortion, however, to the extent that they present Eisenhower’s warning about the acquisition of military power solely as a concern over the nature and scope of martial authority, the fear that America could become, to use another favorite Eisenhower phrase, a “garrison state.” Eisenhower did have that fear, but the military-industrial complex is, well, more complex. A more thorough reading of the farewell address yields a view of Eisenhower’s concern that connects him as much with the New Right as with the New Left—namely, that the military-industrial complex was to be feared as a representative of Big Government that would rob America of a democratic future because it would lead to massive public debt.
It may not be as well remembered today as the phrase “military-industrial complex,” but Dwight Eisenhower was a lifelong believer in a balanced budget, often at his own political cost. Throughout his presidency, he and his administration struggled with a fundamental challenge of the Cold War: Was there such a thing as spending too much money on defense?..
Read entire article at National Interest
This January marks the fiftieth anniversary of Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address, the speech that launched the phrase “military-industrial complex” into the English language. It will no doubt be an occasion for critics of military spending to decry not only massive wartime expenditures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also nuclear-weapons programs that have outlived their original targets, and burgeoning weapons sales abroad. Indeed, it has become fashionable in recent years—for example, in the 2005 documentary Why We Fight—to draw a straight line from Eisenhower’s warning about the “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” to the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s, through to the antiwar opponents of George W. Bush.
Those historical associations have their place. They risk distortion, however, to the extent that they present Eisenhower’s warning about the acquisition of military power solely as a concern over the nature and scope of martial authority, the fear that America could become, to use another favorite Eisenhower phrase, a “garrison state.” Eisenhower did have that fear, but the military-industrial complex is, well, more complex. A more thorough reading of the farewell address yields a view of Eisenhower’s concern that connects him as much with the New Right as with the New Left—namely, that the military-industrial complex was to be feared as a representative of Big Government that would rob America of a democratic future because it would lead to massive public debt.
It may not be as well remembered today as the phrase “military-industrial complex,” but Dwight Eisenhower was a lifelong believer in a balanced budget, often at his own political cost. Throughout his presidency, he and his administration struggled with a fundamental challenge of the Cold War: Was there such a thing as spending too much money on defense?..