Flashback: Eisenhower Warns Americans About The Military Industrial Complex
President Dwight Eisenhower (R) issued a grim warning to the country on Jan. 17, 1961, concerning a threat to our republic. He dubbed it the military-industrial complex, a powerful alliance between weapons contractors and the military.
“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.”
After two terms in office, Eisenhower delivered the message just days before the new president, John F. Kennedy, was inaugurated in.
Eisenhower was concerned about the costs of a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, as well as the resources it would divert from other priorities, such as hospital and school construction.
According to NPR’s Tom Bowman, Eisenhower talked like someone who had witnessed the horrors and lasting melancholy of war in his speech, adding, “we must learn how to compose differences not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”
Bowman also slammed monopolies that control military contracts.
First, “there are only a handful of defense giants,” he says, “which means you can’t shop around for a better price.”
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, for example, are skilled at both lobbying and marketing to advance their goals.
Bowman says, “they also spread the jobs around the country, to lock in political support.”
President Eisenhower was also known to promote fiscal responsibility alongside a defense-oriented foreign policy.
“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,” he said. “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.”
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