DOCSLIB.ORG

Military Industrial Complex (Issue)

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Military Industrial Complex (Issue) Military Industrial Complex (Issue) FURTHER READING Bailyn, Bernard et al. The Great Republic: A History of American makers of plowshares could, with the American People. Lexington, Massachusetts & time and as required, make swords as well. Toronto: D.C. Heath and Company, 1981. But now we can no longer risk emergency Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. New improvisation of national defense; we have York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997. been compelled to create a permanent arma- ments industry of vast proportions . Yet Ketchum, Richard M. The Borrowed Years 1938– we must not fail to comprehend its grave 1941: America on the Way to War. New York: implications. Our toil, resources and liveli- Random House, 1989. hood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. Manchester, William. The Glory and the Dream: A President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, Narrative History of America 1932–1972. New January 17, 1961 York: Bantam Books, 1974. The Oxford Companion to World War II. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. War II the relationship between the two was often one- sided and seemed perpetually set against one another, by the 1970s private business and the military devel- oped a formal and comfortable relationship of mutual support. Since the 1950s especially, military calls upon national resources have vastly increased and, for the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL most part, leading corporations have been the principal COMPLEX (ISSUE) beneficiaries of that demand. While payrolls, research grants, and political influence were large enough to Is the relationship between the armed forces and ensure a consensus for the system during the mid- to the industries that provide them with weapons a safe- late-twentieth century the whole complex has been guard or a threat to world peace and the American underwritten by a popular and almost unassailable democracy? Perhaps no other issue has raised as much anticommunist ideology. But some conservatives fear concern over the coalescence between economic and that the military-industrial complex keeps military political forces as the military-industrial complex, which spending at a level higher than that dictated by the strict today has formed a matrix of government spending, needs of national defense. They claim it leads to foreign initiatives, and ideological commitments. economic dislocation at home and dangerous tensions abroad, and that the separate parts of the military- In 1948 President Harry S. Truman (1945–1953) industrial complex will prove to be countervailing forces. submitted the second largest peacetime budget in Ameri- can history to Congress, justifying it as necessary to While the conjunction between economic and meet the threat of totalitarianism in the world. The political forces may have been new during the Truman budget came to $39.6 billion, with around $18 billion and Eisenhower eras, its roots lay deep in the mandates earmarked for military spending and international af- of Progressive reform which attempted early in the fairs. Such spending created a new industry in the century to rationalize the U.S. economic system and United States devoted to the production of weapons for integrate it with public policy. Even so, it was not until the Pentagon. This industry, which became known as World War I that close ties among the military, the the military-industrial complex, became one of the civilian government, and businessmen were formal- largest industries in the United States and a crucial part ized. Between 1914 to 1916, the federal government’s of the economy. In a pattern similar to World War II efforts to mobilize people, raw materials, production (1939–1945) mobilization, entire corporations were plants, and transportation proved slow and incompe- supported solely by government spending. Unlike World tent. In August 1916, the task of planning mobilization War II, however, there was no end in sight. As long as was entrusted to the Council of National Defense the Soviet Union continued to exist there was a reason (CND), which worked through the National Defense for military spending, even during peacetime. Advisory Commission (NDAC). In 1917, the CND was replaced by the War Industries Board (WIB) and Within the government, the voices of both private under its auspices American industry was organized business and the military have only grown stronger into commodity committees. These committees set since the turn of the century. While on the eve of World prices, priorities, allocations, and other controls and 636 GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF U.S. ECONOMIC HISTORY Military Industrial Complex (Issue) mobilized under their own rules. Meanwhile, the mili- two powers were engaged in a Cold War. But while the tary was torn by its own internal conflicts and competi- government had been involved in coordinating a mutu- tion and was in no position to plan the civilian econo- ally supportive relationship between the military and my. While business was organized along commodity business during World War I and World War II, the lines, the military was organized along operational Cold War dramatically changed this policy. The policy lines, and the two proved to be opposing. Answerable of ‘‘containment’’ committed the United States to a to neither a central planning agency within the military peacetime military-industrial complex for the first time nor to the WIB, each military branch entered the in American history. For the next 45 years there would market with large orders geared toward its own needs, continue to be a large standing army with inflated plus necessary surpluses. In 1918, Bernard Baruch defense expenditures, and large corporations supply- (1870–1965) took over the leadership of the WIB and ing the equipment and supplies. was given enough authority to force the cooperation of But with the coming of the Cold War, many the military. Throughout the rest of World War I, leading military and industrial leaders who had previ- businessmen and military leaders worked closely, and ously enjoyed a highly successful and lucrative war- usually harmoniously, to fill the needs of the wartime time system of military-civilian cooperation during economy. World War II, sought to preserve these advantages in During the inter-war years the military and busi- the demobilization period. During World War II, both ness leaders met regularly to draw up plans for eco- groups had kept one eye focused on the postwar period. nomic mobilization in case of war. Meanwhile, the In the military the desire to keep up budgets and the government facilitated coordination between the two desire of the Army Air Corps for independent status and left military tactics to the military and the economy fueled the arguments that the country should never to business leaders. The result was a series of industrial again find itself unprepared for hostilities, and that mobilization plans drawn up between 1930 and 1939. the country was bound to honor new and global In the end, the military realized the degree to which it peacekeeping responsibilities. was dependent on the cooperation and capacity of Continuing the cooperation that existed between business for the materials it needed, while business the military and civilian businesses during World War became more aware of what the present and future II was considered necessary to meet these new global needs of the military might be for supplies of all types. peacekeeping responsibilities. The nation’s new course In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (1933– began with careful consideration to the potential pit- 1945) attempt to plan for economic recovery after the falls. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961) Great Depression adapted the scheme of the WIB for cautioned in his farewell address (1961) that though it his short- lived New Deal program, the National Indus- was important for the country to have a strong national trial Recovery Administration. defense in times of peace as in times of war, the In 1940, the coming of actual mobilization after so development of a military-industrial complex was not many years of planning, unleashed a torrent of expen- without its dangers. ‘‘In the councils of government, ditures that dwarfed those of both World War I and the we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted New Deal. Altogether, some $315.8 billion was spent influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military- during the war, with the War Department accounting industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise for $179.9 billion and the Navy Department for $83.9 of misplaced power exists and will persist.’’ billion. In the end, a vastly inflated program of govern- For the next three decades after World War II, ment spending and its heavy concentration in a few huge military spending and a closely linked program of large corporations, like General Motors, Ford Motor foreign aid combined to prime the pump of U.S. Company, Chrysler Corporation, Bethlehem Steel, Gen- prosperity as no combination of domestic social pro- eral Electric, United States Steel, Du Pont Chemical, grams had ever been able to do. Military expenditures and AT&T became the standard policy for the wartime ranged from $37 billion in the mid-1950s to just over economy. $79.1 billion in 1969. The bulk of spending was done As World War II was winding down, the alliance directly by the military for research and material and between the Soviet Union and the United States, brought certain large firms were the beneficiaries of the funds. together by a common foe, Adolph Hitler (1889– In 1969, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation received the 1945), was deteriorating. Tensions between the two largest single share, more than $2 billion, McDonnell nations had existed since the Russian Revolution of Douglas with $1 billion and General Electric with $1.6 1917, and within a few years after World War II the billion. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF U.S.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Building a Movement in the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
    Building A Movement In The Non-Profit Industrial Complex Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Michelle Oyakawa Graduate Program in Sociology The Ohio State University 2017 Dissertation Committee: Korie Edwards, Advisor Andrew Martin Steve Lopez Copyrighted by Michelle Mariko Oyakawa 2017 Abstract Today, democracy in the United States is facing a major challenge: Wealthy elites have immense power to influence election outcomes and policy decisions, while the political participation of low-income people and racial minorities remains relatively low. In this context, non-profit social movement organizations are one of the key vehicles through which ordinary people can exercise influence in our political system and pressure elite decision-makers to take action on matters of concern to ordinary citizens. A crucial fact about social movement organizations is that they often receive significant financial support from elites through philanthropic foundations. However, there is no research that details exactly how non-profit social movement organizations gain resources from elites or that analyzes how relationships with elite donors impact grassroots organizations’ efforts to mobilize people to fight for racial and economic justice. My dissertation aims to fill that gap. It is an ethnographic case study of a multiracial statewide organization called the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC) that coordinates progressive social movement organizations in Ohio. Member organizations work on a variety of issues, including ending mass incarceration, environmental justice, improving access to early childhood education, and raising the minimum wage. In 2016, the OOC registered over 155,000 people to vote in Ohio.
    [Show full text]
  • Dynamics of Financialization After the Crisis? How Finance (Still) Gets Its Way
    Dynamics of financialization after the crisis? How finance (still) gets its way Julie Froud Manchester Business School and Centre for Research in Socio‐Cultural Change (CRESC), UK Outline • Starting point: finance is not humbled, (despite current crisis, the resulting bailouts and large losses imposed in terms of foregone GDP and imposed austerity). But growing concerns about ‘imbalance’ • Explaining this as a story about power and elites, mainly about the UK (noting specificities of financialization), but with relevance elsewhere, by: a) looking back at C Wright Mills and b) moving forward with the finance and point value complex. • The aim is to highlight the pervasive, programmatic power of finance. To understand financialization, we have to understand many things. So, a contribution to a collective endeavour. (1) Finance unreformed The story so far… Unreformed finance a) investment banking • Half‐hearted reform in UK: limited structural change ‐> no major bank break‐up; ring fencing of investment banking, not separation; few constraints on long chain leveraged finance; (still) low capital requirements; bonuses survive (eg HSBC Feb 2014) and redundancies postponed • Scandals continue: Libor, exchange rate fixing (even after Libor) Collusion, manipulation of rates ‐> profit and bonus implications; Barclays Capital as ‘loose federation of money making franchises’ (not the ‘go‐to bank’). Finance Minister, George Osborne on Libor crisis: ‘we know what went wrong’…. No interest in learning. Unreformed finance b) retail banking • Half‐hearted reform in UK: more competition via ‘challenger banks’… (but not tackling business model, where RoE targets in mid‐teens drive mis‐selling eg Jenkins at Barclays: 15% RoE target in retail) • Scandals continue: ever more mis‐selling.
    [Show full text]
  • Hustle and Flow: Prison Privatization Fueling the Prison Industrial Complex
    FULCHER FINAL (DO NOT DELETE) 6/10/2012 2:43 PM Hustle and Flow: Prison Privatization Fueling the Prison Industrial Complex Patrice A. Fulcher* ABSTRACT The Prison Industrial Complex (“PIC”) is a profiteering system fueled by the economic interests of private corporations, federal and state correctional institutions, and politicians. The PIC grew from ground fertilized by an increase in the U.S. prison population united with an economically depressed market, stretched budgets, and the ineffective allocation of government resources. The role of the federal, state, and local governments in the PIC has been to allocate resources. This is the first of a series of articles exploring issues surrounding the PIC, including (1) prison privatization, (2) outsourcing the labor of prisoners for profit, and (3) constitutional misinterpretations. The U.S. prison population increased in the 1980s, in part, because of harsh drug and sentencing laws and the racial profiling of Blacks. When faced with the problem of managing additional inmates, U.S. correctional institutions looked to the promise of private prison companies to house and control inmates at reduced costs. The result was the privatization of prisons, private companies handling the management of federal and state inmates. This Article addresses how the privatization of prisons helped to grow the PIC and the two ways in which governments’ expenditure of funds to private prison companies amount to an inefficient allocation of resources: (1) it creates an incentive to increase the prison population, which led to a monopoly and manipulation of the market by Correction Corporation of America (“CCA”) and The GEO Group, Inc.
    [Show full text]
  • Austrian Theorizing: Recalling the Foundations
    AUSTRIAN THEORIZING: RECALLING THE FOUNDATIONS WALTER BLOCK t is a pleasure to reply to Caplan’s (1999) critique of Austrian economics. Unlike other such recent reactions1 this one shows evidence of great familiarity with the IAustrian (praxeological) literature, and a deep interest in its analytical foundations. Thus, Caplan correctly identifies the works of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard as the core of what sets Austrian economics apart from the neoclassical mainstream. And he insightfully relegates the writings of F.A. Hayek and Israel M. Kirzner to an intermediate position between the praxeological and neoclassical approaches.2 We shall defend this core of Austrian economics against Caplan’s criticisms, and show that, just as in the case of these others, his arrows fall wide of their mark. It is nevertheless instructive to highlight his errors. The benefits are a better understanding of the Austrian School, and greater insight into neoclassical short- comings. This article follows the outline of Caplan (1999) and is divided into the same four sections as his: first an introduction, second, consumer theory, third, welfare economics, and fourth, a conclusion. WALTER BLOCK is economics department chairman and professor at the University of Cen- tral Arkansas, Conway. The author would like to thank Guido Hülsmann and Michael Levin for helpful comments to an earlier draft of this paper. He would also like to thank an anony- mous referee who made no fewer than seven suggestions, all of which were incorporated into this paper, much to its improvement. All remaining errors are, of course, my responsibil- ity. 1See in this regard Rosen (1997), Tullock (1998), Timberlake (1987), Demsetz (1997), Yeager (1987) and Krugman (1998).
    [Show full text]
  • Military-Industrial Complex: Eisenhower's Unsolved Problem
    MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: EISENHOWER'S UNSOLVED PROBLEM by )/lrS THOMAS JENKINS BADGER Bo A., George Washington University., 1949 A MASTER'S THESIS submitted fn pa 1 ful 111b nt of the .'_-. -.- ... — -\-C MASTER OF ARTS Department of Political Science KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 1965 Approved by: ~ Major Professor XOOl 1105 6<3 ACKHQWLEOGEMENT TO: Dr. Louis Douglas for suggesting the subject, offering continuous encouragement and valuable advice, and insisting upon a measure of scholar- ship. Or. Robin Higham for reading the manuscript, professional advice and suggestions. Dr. Joseph Hajda, who as the Major Professor, was responsible for the thesis and who tirelessly read and reread drafts, and who patiently pointed out weaknesses needing amplification, correction, or deletion. It Is not Intended to Indicate that these gentlemen concur with the entire thesis. They don't. The errors and misconceptions In the thesis are mine as well as the conclusions but without their assistance the thesis would be unacceptable as a scholarly work. If I could have followed their advice more Intelligently the thesis would be considerably Improved, but whatever merit this work may have the credit belongs to them. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION of the United One hundred and sixty-eight years ago, the first President had served so States presented his farewell address to the country which he from a divided well and which he, as much as any other person, had changed Washington's group of self-oriented states Into a cohesive nation. George permanent alliances principal advice to this young nation was to stay clear of west to settle} with foreign nations.
    [Show full text]
  • Healthcare in the Usa: Understanding the Medical-Industrial Complex
    B3 | HEALTHCARE IN THE USA: UNDERSTANDING THE MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX Introduction In the mid-1960s a group of progressively-minded New York activists came together to found the Health Policy Advisory Center or Health/PAC as it came to be called It was a time of intense activism in New York as poor communi- ties took to the streets demanding improved services and were emboldened to actually take over Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx (known locally as ‘the butcher shop’) 1 Following a 1967 ‘exposé-analysis’ written by one of the authors of this chapter (Robb Burlage), Health/PAC began publishing a monthly bulletin offering a ‘New Left’ perspective on health Three years later in 1970, John and Barbara Ehrenreich published a book-length critique of US healthcare based on the Health/PAC article, titled The American Health Empire. The medical–industrial complex In November 1969, Health/PAC first used the phrase ‘medical–industrial complex’ (MIC) as a way of characterizing the US health system The term was a spin-off from President Eisenhower’s farewell address in 1961, during which he discussed the dangers of the “military–industrial complex” Health/PAC’s use of the term ‘MIC’ incorporated the perception that healthcare was moving away from a system built on individual doctors and small community hospitals; healthcare was becoming more and more the ‘business’ of large academic centres that Health/PAC characterized as medical empires These medical empires were constructed around a central (private, academic) hospital and outlying satellite
    [Show full text]
  • The Place of the Prison in the New Government of Poverty Loïc
    The Place of the Prison in the New Government of Poverty Loïc Wacquant * More than the specifics of statistical figures and trends, it is the deep-seated logic of this swing from the social to the penal that one must grasp here. Far from contradicting the neoliberal project of deregulation and decay of the public sector, the irresistible rise of the U.S. penal state constitutes, as it were, its negative — in the sense of obverse but also of revelator — since it manifests the implementation of a policy of criminalization of poverty that is the indispensable complement to the imposition of precarious and underpaid wage labor as civic obligation for those locked at the bottom of the class and caste structure, as well as the redeployment of social- welfare programs in a restrictive and punitive sense that is concomitant with it. At the time of its institutionalization in the United States of the mid-nineteenth century, “imprisonment was above all a method aiming at the control of deviant and dependent populations,” and inmates were mainly poor people and European immigrants recently arrived in the New World.1 Nowadays, the carceral apparatus of the United States fills an analogous role with respect to those groups rendered superfluous or incongruous by the twofold restructuring of the wage labor relation and state charity: the declining fractions of the working class and poor blacks at the core of formerly industrial cities. In so doing, it has regained a central place in the system of the instruments for the government of poverty, at the crossroads of the deskilled labor market, the collapsing urban ghetto, and social-welfare services “reformed” with a view to buttressing the discipline of desocialized wage work.
    [Show full text]
  • The Party-State in China's Military-Industrial Complex: Implications for US National Security
    Testimony before the U.S.- China Economic and Security Review Commission Hearing on "U.S. Investment in China's Capital Markets and Military-Industrial Complex" The Party-State in China’s Military-Industrial Complex: Implications for U.S. National Security Jason Arterburn Program Director, the Center for Advanced Defense Studies Friday, March 19, 2021 [Type here] US-China Economic Security Review Testimony Introduction China’s domestic political economy exposes the United States to national security risks that our regulatory systems are not well equipped to address. China’s commercial system blurs public and private distinctions, which have become even less meaningful under General Secretary Xi Jinping as the party-state has become resurgent in the commercial sector. While the U.S. policymaking community has largely acknowledged the risks of U.S. exposure to China’s military- industrial base, our regulatory community still faces challenges in how to identify and mitigate risks. This is largely because “the analytical frameworks that many of us are using to understand China’s economy are stuck in past paradigms” that do not reflect the “entirely new political- economic order” that China’s system has produced as both an emergent and intentional phenomenon.1 Experts like James Mulvenon, Anna Puglisi, William Hannas, Didi Kirsten Tatlow, and others have previously produced extensive analyses of China’s technology acquisition ambitions and military-civil fusion system, which have provided the policymaking community with a comprehensive overview of China’s technology acquisition system and its changes over the last decade. In this testimony, I seek to complement their work by contextualizing China’s military-industrial base against the backdrop of recent changes in China’s political economy, with the goal of developing a framework that policymakers and the business community can use to mitigate national security risk as General Secretary Xi Jinping continues to pursue illiberal governance reforms.
    [Show full text]
  • WHY COMPETITION in the POLITICS INDUSTRY IS FAILING AMERICA a Strategy for Reinvigorating Our Democracy
    SEPTEMBER 2017 WHY COMPETITION IN THE POLITICS INDUSTRY IS FAILING AMERICA A strategy for reinvigorating our democracy Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter ABOUT THE AUTHORS Katherine M. Gehl, a business leader and former CEO with experience in government, began, in the last decade, to participate actively in politics—first in traditional partisan politics. As she deepened her understanding of how politics actually worked—and didn’t work—for the public interest, she realized that even the best candidates and elected officials were severely limited by a dysfunctional system, and that the political system was the single greatest challenge facing our country. She turned her focus to political system reform and innovation and has made this her mission. Michael E. Porter, an expert on competition and strategy in industries and nations, encountered politics in trying to advise governments and advocate sensible and proven reforms. As co-chair of the multiyear, non-partisan U.S. Competitiveness Project at Harvard Business School over the past five years, it became clear to him that the political system was actually the major constraint in America’s inability to restore economic prosperity and address many of the other problems our nation faces. Working with Katherine to understand the root causes of the failure of political competition, and what to do about it, has become an obsession. DISCLOSURE This work was funded by Harvard Business School, including the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness and the Division of Research and Faculty Development. No external funding was received. Katherine and Michael are both involved in supporting the work they advocate in this report.
    [Show full text]
  • The Merchants of Death
    THE MERCHANTS OF DEATH The Military-Industrial Complex and the Influence on Democracy Name: Miriam Collaris Student number: 387332 Erasmus University Rotterdam Master thesis: Global History & International Relations Supervisor: Prof. Wubs Date: June 12th, 2016 Merchants of Death Miriam Collaris Erasmus University Rotterdam June 12, 2016 PREFACE This is a thesis about the Military-industrial Complex in the United States of America, a subject, which has been widely discussed in the 1960s, but has moved to the background lately. I got inspired by this subject through an internship I have done in Paris in 2012. Here I was working for an event agency that organized business conventions for the defense and security sector, and in particular the aerospace industry. This was the first time I got in touch with this defense industry and this was the first moment that I realized how much money is involved in this sector. Warfare turned out to be real business. At the conventions enormous stands emerged with the most advanced combat vehicles and weaponry. These events were focused on matchmaking between various players in this sector. Hence, commercial deals were made between government agencies and the industry, which was very normal and nobody questioned this. When I read about this Military-industrial Complex, years later, I started to think about these commercial deals between government and industry and the profits that were gained. The realization that war is associated with profits, interested me in such a way that I decided to write my master
    [Show full text]
  • Outlines of a Model of Pure Plantation Economr By
    III. THE MECHANISM OF PLANTATION-TYPE ECONOMIES Outlines of a Model of Pure Plantation Economr By LLOYD BEST I. A PARTIAL TYPOLOGY OF ECONOMIC SYSTEMS The larger studyl of which this outline essay forms a part is concerned with the comparative study of economic systems. Following Myrdal2 and Seers3, we have taken the view that economic theory in the underdeveloped regions at any rate, can profit by relaxing its unwitting pre-occupation with the special case of the North Atlantic countries, and by proceeding to a typ- ology of structures4 each having characteristic laws of motion. s Plantation Economy, the type which we have selected for intensive study, falls within the general class of externally-propelled economies.5 Specifically, we isolate Hinterland Economy which can be further distinguished, for ex- ample, from Metropolitan Economy. In the latter, too, the adjustment pro- cess centres on foreign trade and payments but the locus of discretion and choice is at home and it is by this variable that we differentiate. Hinterland economy, indeed, is what is at the discretion of metropolitan economy. The re- lationship between the two may be described, summarily at this point, as mercantilist. In this designation inheres certain specifications regarding what may be called the general institutional framework of collaboration betweeen the two. It will suffice here to note the five major rules of the game, as it were. First, there is the most general provision which defines exclusive spheres of influence of a metropolis and the limitations on external intercourse for the hinterland. In the real world there have been, and still are, many ex- amples of this: the Inter-American System, the British Commonwealth, the French Community, the centrally-planned economies, and so on.
    [Show full text]
  • The Changing Military Industrial Complex
    The Changing Military Industrial Complex J Paul Dunne University of the West of England, Bristol and University of Cape Town Elisabeth Sköns Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Stockholm March 2011 Abstract The first reference to a military industrial complex (MIC) was made by US President Eisenhower in 1961. He then referred to something historically specific: the build-up of a large permanent military establishment and a permanent arms industry, which raised his concerns for the unwarranted influence of these societal forces. Subsequently the meaning of the MIC evolved to refer to the vested interests within the state and industry in expanding the military sector and in increasing military spending, with external threats providing the justification. During the Cold War, when the defence was strongly focused on deterrence, this produced a set of specific state-industry relationships that in turn generated a beneficial environment for the development and strengthening of the MIC. With the end of the Cold War, the conditions for a strong MIC were less favourable, at least initially, with changes in the international security environment, cuts in military spending and arms production, and ensuing privatisation, commercialisation, and internationalisation of military activities as well as of arms production. This paper discusses how the MIC has been affected by these changes and the degree to which there has been continuity of old power structures and a continuing MIC. Keywords: Military industrial complex; arms production JEL: H56; D4 1 Introduction Dwight Eisenhower, an ex-military Republican President of the USA, in his 1961 Farewell Address was the first to express concern about the impact of the ‘conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry’, which, he noted, was ‘new in American experience’.
    [Show full text]