Posts Tagged ‘Military-Industrial Complex’
“We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”*…
The world is a turbulent and sometimes dangerous place. No one knew that better than Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led Allied Forces in Europe during World War II and later served as President…
As President of the United States for two terms, Eisenhower had slowed the push for increased defense spending despite pressure to build more military equipment during the Cold War’s arms race. Nonetheless, the American military services and the defense industry had expanded a great deal in the 1950s. Eisenhower thought this growth was needed to counter the Soviet Union, but it confounded him. Though he did not say so explicitly, his standing as a military leader helped give him the credibility to stand up to the pressures of this new, powerful interest group. He eventually described it as a necessary evil.
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. . . . 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. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . 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.
As Samuel Geddes argues, the dilemma has only ripened. Western defense giants tout cutting-edge tech, but their “state-of-the-art” systems often fall short in asymmetrical warfare. From faulty missile defense systems to overpriced carriers, the only thing that consistently works is the profit machine…
The ineffectiveness of “cutting-edge” military technology shown in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the spillover conflicts undermines the notion that the military-industrial complex aims to win wars. Instead, it reveals its true objective: profiting from ongoing conflicts.
Since its crushing victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, one of Israel’s primary functions as a US-European client state has been that of a weapons laboratory. Throughout eight decades of repressing, invading, and annexing the territory of regional countries, it has served as a proving ground for arms manufacturers.
This continuous opportunity for such demonstration has enabled Israel, starting in the 1980s, to develop its own highly globalized military-industrial complex. From tanks to drones, “Israel” became a byword for the technical superiority and unbeatable effectiveness of western hard power over those on its receiving end.
Since the turn of the millennium, however, and especially since the Hamas-led Palestinian offensive against Israel on October 7, the region has become a weapons lab of a very different kind. It now showcases the armaments of its enemies and their ability, for a fraction of the cost and technical complexity, to render its space-age technology uneconomical and, by extension, obsolete.
The spread of cheap, cost-effective arms among asymmetric opponents of the West has significantly blunted the power of conventional weapons systems. The rational thing to do is accept this and redirect these hundreds of billions of wasted dollars to social programs and infrastructure. Almost anything would be more defensible than the status quo…
[Geddes unpacks the history of the last several decades and examines a number of troubled defense programs…]
… The most notorious example of wastefulness in military spending is undoubtedly the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jet. From the program’s inception in 2006 to the present, the F-35 was projected to cost over $1.7 trillion over its lifetime. Persistent cost overruns and development woes have angered even the Pentagon itself, which opened the program up to competitive bidding in 2012. More than a decade later, the rapid spread of drone technology has made it possible for unmanned craft, sometimes referred to as “loitering munitions,” to perform many of the tasks traditionally handled by fighter jets — with little overengineering and none of the risk to an actual pilot. That the total budget of this program could eradicate all American student loan debt or cover half the cost of a national health system only adds to the obscenity of it all.
It is well-known that the military-industrial economy is dependent on public subsidy. The technology in mobile phones, computers, and the internet — essential to modern life —was not “invented” by figures like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, but was instead developed by public investment. The initial funding came from decades of American taxpayer dollars.
Capitalism is not designed to be ethically consistent, but if it were, companies whose business model depends on state supports would be paying out dividends to every single American as a return on their initial investment.
In 2024, the US military budget reached an incredible $841 billion. If even a fraction of these funds were to be spent on restoring the education system to a level befitting the richest country on earth, canceling university tuition debt, or creating a national health system, it would achieve far greater benefits. While $1 trillion might not result in effective missile shields, it is very likely capable of creating a functioning health or educational system…
“The Incompetence of Masters of War,” from @SamuelGeddes in @jacobin.
Further to his point on the effectiveness of U.S. defense spending, see “America is not ready for a major war, says a bipartisan commission” and “The US might lose a war with China.”
And for more on the arguments for alternatives, see “The military-industrial complex as a variety of capitalism and threat to democracy: rethinking the political economy of guns versus butter.”
* Dwight D. Eisenhower
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As we contemplate conflict, we might pause to contrast the rigorously serious with the frivolously venal: it was on this date in 1835 that the New York Sun began a series of six articles detailing the discovery of civilized life on the moon; circulation soared. Now known as “The Great Moon Hoax,” the articles attributed the “discovery” to Sir John Herschel (who figured in last Monday’s post), the greatest living astronomer of the day. Herschel was initially amused, wryly noting that his own real observations could never be as exciting. But ultimately he tired of having to answer questioners who believed the story. The series was not discovered to be a hoax for several weeks after its publication and, even then, while the paper did admit (on September 16, 1835) that the whole thing was a “satire,” it never issued a retraction (and didn’t suffer a drop in sales).
“Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before”*…
Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of Memory, c. 100
We think of memory as something internal—we remember with our minds (or, for the materialists among us, our brains). But human history is cluttered with attempts to externalize memory by encoding it onto objects and images. We have built models and systems to help us organize, keep track of, and recall information. These techniques are part of what the ancient Greeks called artificial memory. For the Greeks, natural memory encompassed those things a person happened to remember, and artificial memory consisted of recollections a person buttressed through preparation and effort. Artificial memory was a skill that could be learned and improved upon, one that had its own art: the ars memoriae, or art of memory.
The anthropologist Drew Walker reminds us that so-called mnemonic devices are not objects that stand alone but are instead “part of action.” These memory aids cannot fully store information the way writing does; they work only if you have already memorized the related material. Yet even as mere prompts or catalysts, they serve as crucial technologies for preserving and passing on histories, cultural practices, and learned wisdom.
Scholar Lynne Kelly argues that prehistoric and nonliterate cultures relied on memory technologies to preserve their oral traditions, a practice that continues to this day. Australian Aboriginal songlines record memory in short verses that are to be sung at particular places. Knowing the song helps you find your way across the territory—its melodies and rhythms describe the landscape—while its words tell the history of both the people and the land itself, describing, for example, which creator animal built that rocky outcrop or crevasse. Some songlines tell histories that trace back forty thousand years. Many are sacred and cannot be shared with outsiders. The Southern Australian Museum’s 2014 exhibit of the Ngiṉṯaka songline caused significant controversy because some Aṉangu felt the exhibit shared parts of the songline that were meant to be secret and that its curators had not sufficiently consulted with them. While songlines transform large expanses of land into a mnemonic device, other oral cultures have turned to smaller objects—calendar stones, ropes with knots in them, sticks marked with notches—to serve as tables of contents for important stories and information…
Jules Evans reviews mnemotechnics and the visualization of memory– the ways that we remember: “Summon Up Remembrance.”
See also “It’s a memory technique, a sort of mental map”*…
* Steven Wright
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As we stroll down memory lane, we might recall that it was on this date in 1961 that President Dwight D, Eisenhower made his farewell address on a national television broadcast. Perhaps most famously, Eisenhower, the only general to be elected president in the 20th century, used the speech to warn the nation against the corrupting influence of what he described as the “military-industrial complex.”
But he also used the occasion to urge a long view of our America and its citizen’s responsibilities:
As we peer into society’s future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
“There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship”*…
Democracy stopped declining in 2018, according to the latest edition of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. The index rates 167 countries by 60 indicators across five broad categories: electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties. It is stricter than most similar indices: it concludes that just 4.5% of the world’s people live in a “full democracy”. However, the overall global score remained stable in 2018 for the first time in three years. Just 42 countries experienced a decline, compared with 89 in 2017. Encouragingly, 48 improved.
In recent years, threats to democracy around the world have become increasingly obvious. The Arab spring fizzled. China’s leader is poised to rule for life. Populists with autocratic tendencies have won elections in the Philippines, Brazil and Mexico and subverted democratic institutions in Hungary, Turkey and Poland. Perhaps because the trend is so glaring—strongmen in different countries often copy each other’s tactics, soundbites and scapegoats—voters are not taking it lying down. Political participation improved more than any other measure on the EIU’s index. This is true even in advanced democracies such as the United States, where voters are highly disgruntled. Polarisation in America has led to anger, gridlock and [a government shutdown]. According to Gallup polls from January to mid-November 2018, the share of Americans who approve of the way that Congress is handling its job had fallen to an average of 18%, down from 40% in 2000. Perhaps because they are so cross, they are more likely to vote. Turnout at the 2018 mid-term elections was the highest for over 100 years.
Parts of Europe are suffering from a democratic malaise. Italy fell from 21st to 33rd in the rankings after voters elected a populist coalition that seeks to bypass democratic institutions and curtail the civil liberties of immigrants and Roma. Turkey’s score declined for the sixth year in a row as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan swept aside most constraints on his power. Russia deteriorated for the tenth year in a row, after the main opposition candidate was barred from running in a presidential election and Vladimir Putin continued to crush civil liberties. Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia saw slight improvements in 2018, mostly reflecting higher scores for political participation.
The report warns that all this may be a pause, rather than the end of democracy’s retreat. The global rise in engagement, combined with a continued crackdown on civil liberties such as freedom of expression, is a potentially volatile mix. It could be a recipe for instability in 2019.
See the report in full– and explore the interactive version of the map, above– at “The retreat of global democracy stopped in 2018.”
* Ralph Nader
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As we commit ourselves to citizenship, we might recall that it was on this date in 1961 that President Dwight D, Eisenhower made his farewell address on a national television broadcast. Perhaps most famously, Eisenhower, the only general to be elected president in the 20th century, used the speech to warn the nation against the corrupting influence of what he described as the “military-industrial complex.”
But he also used the occasion to urge a long view of our America and its citizen’s responsibilities:
As we peer into society’s future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
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