New Perspectives on the History of the Military-Industrial Complex

A half-century ago, outgoing president Dwight D. Eisenhower reminded the American people that they were engaged in a war with no end in sight—a conflict against an enemy driven by "a hostile ideology—global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method." Despite the great dangers presented by this formidable enemy, however, Eisenhower did not advocate any drastic response. On the contrary, most of his remarkable farewell address of January 1961 warned Americans against the possibility that demands for better security would crowd out other important social goals, upsetting the proper "balance" among them. There was a real danger, Eisenhower argued, that concerns about security would lead to the "unwarranted influence of a growing 'military-industrial complex' and a new "scientific-technological elite." These products of the cold war should never be allowed, the president argued, to "endanger our liberties or democratic processes."¹

In the decade and a half that followed Eisenhower's address, during and immediately after the Vietnam War, the phrase "military-industrial complex" (MIC) enjoyed considerable currency.² It was used especially by critics of the economic and political establishment following in the footsteps of the radical sociologist C. Wright Mills, whose 1956 book The Power Elite had described a recent quantum leap in the concentration and integration of American economic, political, and military power. At the beginning of the 1970s, many critics built on the warnings of Mills and Eisenhower, describing the growth of a giant cold war government-industry establishment that was insulated from both democratic politics and competitive capitalism. Usually described as dysfunctional and corrupt, the MIC of the Vietnam era was understood as a relatively new danger, perhaps an inevitable consequence of the country's new global power, which made a mockery of traditional American ideals.³

One important component of this MIC literature that proliferated in the years after Eisenhower's address was a critique of American business. Large industrial corporations, in particular, were understood to be the willing partners of the Pentagon.⁴ Together, critics of the MIC explained, the military establishment and the corporations created a giant sector in the American economy devoted to the production of deadly weapons, in which public dollars were funneled to favored contractors without much competition. The MIC socialized risk, privatized profit, and gave corporations undue influence over U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

After the Vietnam era, interest in the MIC faded. One reason for this was the end of the war itself, which turned out to be the beginning of a period of relative peace that would last nearly two decades. Another factor was the transformation of the American political economy. Starting in the 1970s, federal government spending on social welfare began to surpass military outlays. (By the end of the century, military spending accounted for about 4 percent of gross domestic product; during Eisenhower's presidency, it had been close to 10 percent.) This political-economic transformation, along with the end of the draft, made the military establishment seem somewhat less important. At the same time, the American left (and much of the academic establishment) had become increasingly interested in popular social movements, multiculturalism, feminism, and the politics of the everyday. Together, these several developments attracted attention away from the MIC and toward other important subjects.

On the whole, historians have, like scholars in other fields, shown little interest in the MIC since the early 1970s. But for business and economic historians in particular (along with certain segments of the military history community), the subject has held greater interest. For instance, Paul Koistinen and Robert Cuff, the authors of pioneering studies of the U.S. economic mobilizations for World War I and World War II, have both enjoyed some attention in the business history field. Their work, along with that of Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Merritt Roe Smith, and others, showed that the MIC had a long history, or at least prehistory, which reached back into the nineteenth century.⁵ Over the last generation, a variety of newer studies has continued...