From President Eisenhower's farewell address:

Quote :

"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 state house, 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."

This topic may be old, but a post I saw earlier today reminded me of it. I was just curious as to what others' thoughts may be on the subject.

If I am not mistaken, it refers to the industry created during the second world war that became a large segment of both our government and economic sectors. Throughout the cold war, and now with the war on terror, we have continued to funnel resources into this industry.

I know that defense spending makes up more than 50% of our federal budget. How much of our GDP is defense-related? And how may this have affected our foreign policy over the past half century? Other than just providing sustinance during the cold war, has the MIC actually had any influence on whether or not we conduct military operations or sell military arms to other nations?

10/4/2007 9:07:07 PM

i thought we sell guns to places we like cause china and russia sell guns to places we hate?

10/4/2007 9:20:48 PM

I didn't mean to imply that the MIC is the sole reason for our military spending. But that does raise several questions regarding the reasons why we sell weaponry to certain countries.

Does anyone know how much military spending is provided to different campaigns in foreign countries? I know that Israel receives a rather large sum, as well as Colombia.

[Edited on October 4, 2007 at 9:36 PM. Reason : Turkey, as well?]

10/4/2007 9:35:14 PM

I had no idea that Saudi Arabia got so much.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_us_mil_exp-military-us-exports

10/4/2007 9:42:31 PM

Quote :

"Other than just providing sustinance during the cold war, has the MIC actually had any influence on whether or not we conduct military operations or sell military arms to other nations?"

I'm afraid we're all out of the simple Yes or No answers, but you can still get either the Official Evasion or Unofficial Conjecture.

For a small additional charge, you can have it spun by your choice of Plausible-Denial Government Apologist or Batshit Crazy Crackpot Conspiracy Theorist.

10/4/2007 10:41:59 PM

Quote :

"I know that defense spending makes up more than 50% of our federal budget. How much of our GDP is defense-related?"

First of all, you're wrong on the 50% figure. I'll refer you to:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/pdf/hist.pdf

Defense spending represents about 4% of the GDP, and around 20% of federal outlays. Even taking into acount spending that ultimately ends up in the defense sector despite being classified under some other heading, "more than 50% of the federal budget" is a hard sell. Various social programs far, far outweigh military spending.

The problem with the military industrial complex isn't really that it causes us to spend a lot of money on defense. The problems are:

1) It causes defense money to be poorly appropriated on projects that are at best inefficient and at worst disastrous. Look at the Osprey, a textbook example of how the MIC drains cash for stupid things.
2) It causes the government to spend too much money, even on things that it needs. I don't know that the toilets in the Pentagon cost $20,000, but that's generally the idea.
3) It limits competition. With a couple of enormous companies suckling the government's infinite teat, it's very hard for other companies to really take off.
4) It allows the miltiary and business to get too involved in government, which most of us never really like

10/4/2007 11:14:09 PM

please tell me that you have this in mind because of Letterman's recent daily Bush gaffe bit.

10/4/2007 11:40:36 PM

GOP is right i thought the figure was around 20-25%. Even at this level I think this is ridiculous. Someone is going to counter talking about China, Russia, or the turrists but perhaps if we had better diplomatic skills and world relations it would not be necessary to waste 25% of the budget on defense. $$$ definitely needs to be allocated for this but their is a lot of other things this money could be used for and nothing else taxes could be lowered.

10/5/2007 12:02:40 AM

As a general commentary, I think its interesting that this came not from a Noam Chomsky type, but from a former Five-Star General and President of the United States. The man knew of what he spoke.

10/5/2007 12:32:50 AM

Quote :

"Someone is going to counter talking about China, Russia, or the turrists but perhaps if we had better diplomatic skills and world relations it would not be necessary to waste 25% of the budget on defense."

Well, yes, there is a theoretical quality of diplomacy that could effectively neutralize all threats. Whether it's possible for humans in general or Americans in particular is doubtful.

Regardless, the point isn't just that there are bad guys. It's that we've accepted the role as chief good guy, at least in our own minds. Really and truly, a large fraction of every dollar in the defense budget is for the defense of somebody who isn't American. Especially after WWII, we effectively told a number of countries, "Look, don't worry so much about the guns, we got it covered."

10/5/2007 6:40:21 PM

Quote :

"we've accepted the role as chief good guy"

yay we are the good guys like superman flying in and saving the day against the evil lex luther Saddam Hussein so that peace & harmony will be restored in Iraq.

10/5/2007 7:22:26 PM

Thanks for the input and for correcting my error.

4% GDP still seems fairly large. Anyone have an idea how much of our GDP went to funding WWII or Vietnam? I would be curious to see how spending compares between then and now. Isn't spending for Iraq approximately 1% of our GDP? It seems rather small on that scale, although it represents billions of dollars.

10/5/2007 8:06:06 PM

Quote :

"ay we are the good guys like superman flying in and saving the day against the evil lex luther Saddam Hussein so that peace & harmony will be restored in Iraq."

I didn't say we were the good guy, just that we had taken that role for ourselves.

Quote :

"Anyone have an idea how much of our GDP went to funding WWII or Vietnam?"

The answer to all of those questions is in the link I posted, but fine, I will hunt it down for you.

For most of WWII, it was between 37 and 38%.

In the heated years of the Vietnam conflict, defense spending generally declined from around 10% to more in the range of 6% of GDP.

In 1953, it spiked at 14.2%. This is the highest it reached post-WWII that I found.

This site provides an accurate listing since 1940:

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative-size.php

[Edited on October 5, 2007 at 8:37 PM. Reason : SITE]

10/5/2007 8:34:45 PM

Sorry. I had only given that pdf file a cursory glance, due to its size - I thought it was only statistics for 2007. Anyway, thanks for pulling that.

And I agree. It's as if those other countries never designated us as Team America: World Police; we just declared ourselves as such.

As for Saudi Arabia:

10/5/2007 8:48:07 PM

Quote :

"And I agree. It's as if those other countries never designated us as Team America: World Police"

Well, originally it wasn't "world police," it was just "anti-commie shield." And we didn't unilaterally impose the idea on anybody, no matter what that monkey de Gaulle tries to tell you.

And, in a couple of cases (cough cough axis powers cough) we told them we'd handle the military thing because they'd demonstrated a tendency to get a little frisky when left alone with one.

10/5/2007 8:53:10 PM

Quote :

"comin' again to save the mother fuckin' day, ya'll!!!"

10/5/2007 9:11:17 PM

We need to ramp this up! Patriots are regularly eliminating one of if not the best missiles Russia has

6/16/2023 9:44:48 PM