Military-industrial complex

From Chance for Peace speech:

The Chance for Peace speech, also known as the Cross of Iron speech, was an address given by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 16, 1953, shortly after the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

"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"

Eisenhower expressed regret for having set the precedent of large peacetime military expenditures.

From: _The White House Years 1956-61_ by Dwight D. Eisenhower:

"During the years of my Presidency, and especially the latter years, I began to feel more and more uneasiness about the effect on the nation of tremendous peacetime military expenditures.

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But in mid-1953, after the end of the Korean War, I determined that we would not again become so weak militarily as to encourage aggression. This decision demanded a military budget that would establish, by its very size, a peacetime precedent.

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The makers of the expensive munitions of war, to be sure, like the profits they receive...Each community in which a manufacturing plant or a military installation is located profits from the money spent and the jobs created in the area...All of these forces, and more, tend, therefore, to override the convictions of responsible officials who are determined to have a defense structure of adequate size but are equally determined that it shall not grow beyond that level. In the long run, the combinations of pressures for growth can create an almost overpowering influence. Unjustified military spending is nothing more than a distorted use of the nation's resources."

From Eisenhower's farewell address

Despite being a politician with a military background and the only general to be elected president in the 20th century, Eisenhower famously warned the nation with regards to the corrupting influence of what he describes as the "military-industrial complex".

"We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution.

But each proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration; the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.

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 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 alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now 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 Statehouse, 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."

He also expressed his concomitant concern for corruption of the scientific process as part of this centralization of funding in the Federal government:

"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.

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The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet in holding scientific 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."

In 2011, the United States spent more (in absolute numbers) on its military than the next 13 nations combined.