Abdullah Miroğlu
On January 20, 2025, US President Joe Biden, who expects to hand over his post to Donald Trump, authorized the use on Russian territory of American long-range missile systems supplied to Ukraine. It is argued that Biden’s outgoing decision will escalate the Russia-Ukraine war across Europe, lead to a NATO-Russia war, and may even lead to a world war.
During his election campaign, Trump had promised to end the “Ukraine-Russia War”. At the “Conservative Political Action Conference” organized by the Republicans in Washington during his first term as US President, Trump said, “We have spent 7 trillion dollars in the Middle East in the last 20 years, but we can’t land our planes without turning off the lights. That’s too bad. We spent 7 trillion dollars and we have to turn off our lights when we land.”
“I will always be true to my promise to end endless wars,” Trump said in a speech before handing over the presidency to Biden in January 2021.
Following reports that US President Biden had lifted restrictions on the use of long-range missiles to Ukraine, Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. posted a message on his X account on November 17, saying:
“The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they start WWIII before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives. Those trillions need to be locked up. To hell with life, imbeciles!”
Donald Trump Jr.’s remarks once again highlighted the relationship between the Pentagon and the US Government and the big arms companies, the so-called “American Military-Industrial Complex”.
US PRESIDENT EISENHOWER’S FAREWELL ADDRESS
It was US President Dwight Eisenhower who coined the now widely used phrase “American Military Industrial Complex”.
Eisenhower first used the phrase in his “farewell speech” delivered on January 17, 1961 at the White House on national television.
Eisenhower of the Republican Party was preparing to hand over his two-term presidency to his successor John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) of the Democratic Party on January 20, 1961.
Eisenhower’s words about the “American Military Industrial Complex” in this farewell speech, which lasted less than 10 minutes, still resonate 63 years later. In one of the 20th century’s most important speeches, Eisenhower asked the American people to be vigilant against the destructive effects of the “Military-Industrial Complex”.
The fact that Eisenhower was a former soldier who had commanded the Allied forces in Europe during the Second World War and later became the first Commander-in-Chief of NATO made this warning all the more effective and striking.
So why was Eisenhower urging Americans to be vigilant and vigilant against the Military Industrial Complex that marked his farewell address?
Eisenhower complained that the “American military industrial complex”, which had grown to gigantic proportions after the Second World War, had altered the relationship between private and public interests in favor of the former.
Eisenhower pointed out that the military industry’s influence over the US federal and state governments would be dangerous for the future of the country and democracy.
The following sentences in Eisenhower’s speech gave enough clues about the tone of the warning:
“A vital element in the preservation of peace is our military institutions. Our weapons must be strong and ready for immediate action so that no potential aggressor dares risk his own destruction.
Until our recent conflicts around the world, the United States had no arms industry. American plowshare makers could make swords in time and when necessary. But we can no longer risk the emergency improvisation of national defense; we have had to create a permanent armaments industry of gigantic proportions. In addition, three and a half million men and women work directly in defense establishments. Every year we spend more on military security than the net income of all United States corporations.
This combination of an enormous military establishment and a huge arms industry is new to the American experience. The total impact – economic, political and even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state legislature and every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to grasp its serious implications. Our labor, resources and livelihoods are at stake; so is the structure of our society. We must be vigilant against the military-industrial complex gaining undue influence in the councils of government, whether or not it is inclined to do so. Misplaced power has and will continue to have the potential to rise disastrously. We must not allow this power to grow to the point where it threatens our democratic development and freedoms.
However, despite Eisenhower’s warning, the destructive impact of the Military-Industrial Complex on American democracy continued to grow.
On the other hand, the “Military-Industrial Complex” became part of or the cause of the US’s “endless wars” overseas.
Currently, US defense spending is more than the combined defense spending of the next 10 countries, including the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation.
The US defense budget for 2024 is about $1 trillion. This figure is expected to increase further for 2025.
PURPOSE OF MILITARY EXPENDITURES
Located in a secure geographical location surrounded by two oceans, the periodic increase in US defense expenditures has occasionally sparked controversy in the United States.
According to some dissident American authors who have written articles and books on the “military-industrial complex”, “the primary purpose of military spending is the spending itself”.
The lion’s share of the US defense budget goes to five major arms companies – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon Technologies. These five companies are also among the largest suppliers to the world arms market.
In the eyes of the defenders, “what is good for the Military Industrial Complex is good for America”.
Therefore, the increase or decrease in defense spending is of most concern to the arms companies.
The “American Military Industrial Complex” relies heavily on the high US defense budget and ever-expanding military spending.
The large corporations that make up the Military Industrial Complex have political influence that shapes not only US military power, but also global security policies and foreign relations.
Defense spending often survives attempts at restraint in the US Congress. In other words, it exceeds the projected budget targets, and the numbers grow even larger with the additions.
In 2016, the year Donald Trump was elected US president, the defense budget was $610 billion. In 2017, the Defense Budget was 700 billion dollars, and by 2020 it would increase to 732 billion dollars. In Joe Biden’s first presidential year, the Defense budget was $753 billion, and in 2024 it was almost $900 billion.
These figures show that military spending has increased periodically under Republican Trump and Democrat Biden.
The increases in the Defense Budget are justified by strategic and geopolitical competition with China in the Asia-Pacific region, relations with Russia, the Ukraine War, and new generation military threats such as cyber security and artificial intelligence.
Beyond being explained by defense and security threats, periodic increases in military spending have led to criticism that the Military-Industrial Complex has become an end in itself for growth and sustaining that growth. Accordingly, the increase in military expenditures is in fact not a goal, but part of an ongoing mechanism of private profit.
Therefore, there is a relationship between the US’s ever-increasing military expenditures and the “endless wars” that have become permanent, one feeding the other and becoming increasingly difficult to separate from each other. This relationship leads to the militarization of US foreign policy. As a result, in order to maintain its global hegemony, the United States has become extremely aggressive about not losing military supremacy to any other power.
Israel, on the other hand, is one of the components of the “American Military-Industrial Complex”. Israel is playing a leading role in using new technology weapons on the Palestinians and the Lebanese, and in demonstrating these weapons to the recipient countries. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said, in response to criticism of military aid to Israel, “For every tank we give Israel for free, Israel’s neighbors buy four American tanks. This is how empire works.”
WHY DOES THE USA SPEND SO MUCH ON THE MILITARY?
From 1993 to 1997, Madeleine Albright served as the US Ambassador to the UN, and a dialog between her and Colin Powell, then US Chief of Staff, clarifies this question.
In his memoirs, “My American Journey”, published in 2003, Powell described his disagreement with Madeleine Albright about the US military’s refusal to use military force without a clear political objective.
Powell essentially believed that the US should resort to military force only after all diplomatic, political and economic avenues had failed. Powell was determined that the United States should not get bogged down in a long, interminable and fruitless vortex of war, as in Vietnam. This approach, diametrically opposed to the Neocons, the architects of the invasion of Iraq, is known as the “Powell Doctrine”.
Madeleine Albright was a Democrat, but she was as hawkish on foreign policy and the use of military force as the “Neocons”. In an argument with General Powell, Albright said, “What’s the point of having this great military that you keep talking about if we can’t use it?” Powell was almost on the verge of a breakdown at this response.
Powell also noted in his memoirs that Madeleine Albright treated American soldiers as “toy soldiers to be moved around on a global chessboard”.
Madeleine Albright also served as Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001, during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
On May 12, 1996, Albright was asked on “60 Minutes”, hosted by Lesley Stahl on CBS News, about the deaths of Iraqi children due to US and UN sanctions.
Lesley Stahl said, “We heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And you know, is it worth it?”
“I think it’s a very difficult choice, but we think the price is worth it,” Albright replied.
On February 19, 1998, Madeleine Albright’s remarks on “The Today Show” hosted by Matt Lauer on “NBC TV” revealed the ideology she ascribed to the American military. In this speech, Albright said:
“If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are an indispensable nation. We stand tall and we can see further than any other country and we recognize the danger to us all. I know that American men and women in uniform are always ready to sacrifice for freedom, democracy and the American way of life.”
These words showed that there was little difference between the “neocons” and the “liberal internationalists” on the use of military force.
In his Farewell Address in 1961, US President Eisenhower also said:
“As I address the American people for the last time, I issue a very cautionary warning: this country must always exercise great care and control over the size and strength of its military industry in order to maintain world peace in the United States and to preserve our security. This combined power, exceeding our defense needs, begins to defend its own interests, perhaps against the will of our people. As a result, all the resources of our society are diverted to military preparations and armaments, independent of the free will of the people. This could pose a grave danger to America’s future.”
These sentences were a warning of the risk that the “military-industrial complex” could become autonomous, escaping the control of the government and the people.
The “military-industrial complex” Eisenhower referred to was a powerful network of war equipment manufacturing companies, the military and the government. This network includes a system backed by huge military budgets to ensure US global military superiority.
According to Eisenhower, this system carried the dangers of encouraging an arms race, unnecessary military spending and deviation from peaceful foreign policies.
Another interesting point about Eisenhower’s farewell speech was some changes made in the text of the speech.
In the first version of the speech, the US Congress was added to the “Military Industrial-Congressional Complex”. The “Congress” component was removed from the original text by Eisenhower at the last minute. The reason was that a new Congress had taken office as a result of the 1960 elections. According to scholars working on the text, Eisenhower did not find it politically expedient to open a debate on the new Congress.
Many writers today use the term “Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex”. They include national security and defense think tanks and the media. In fact, the list of the components of the “Military-Industrial Complex” goes on and on.
Currently, the US has more than 750 military bases scattered in different parts of the world. The number of military personnel in bases spread across Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa ranges from 200,000 to 250,000. With the new US Cold War against China, new military bases are being added in the Asia-Pacific.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COMPANIES ALSO WANT A SHARE
A new component of the “US Military-Industrial Complex” is companies linked to next-generation military technologies such as artificial intelligence, nuclear defense, space technologies and cybersecurity.
Artificial intelligence and autonomous systems play an important role in military defense strategies. Because of these new components, defense budgets in the United States are expected to grow even more in the coming years.
In the United States, investment companies, technology companies and artificial intelligence companies are increasingly developing closer ties with the “military-industrial complex”. These collaborations are driven by both economic interests and strategic objectives.
While the crises and deepening uncertainties in the global system are accelerating the arms race, they are also driving investment and financial firms towards arms companies in order to benefit from the market profits arising from this race.
Large investors such as BlackRock and Vanguard are investing in military industry giants such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman, supporting their growth.
The development of Artificial Intelligence has become a critical area for military strategies and security policies. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning are developing rapidly, especially in areas such as drones, autonomous ground vehicles and military software. Tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Palantir are involved in military projects, offering AI and cloud computing solutions.
For example, Google’s “Project Maven” is collaborating with the Pentagon to develop technologies for analyzing drone imagery using artificial intelligence. Companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, and Palantir are also contributing directly or indirectly to the defense sector.
The strengthening of ties between investment companies, technology firms and AI companies and the “military-industrial complex” is making the defense industry more dependent on technological innovation and growing military spending. This allows big arms companies to win more public contracts.
Palantir Technologies, a data management and software company co-founded by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire who supported Trump in the last election, is doing defense business with the US government.
On August 7, 2024, the US news website “Axios” published an article titled “What is the biggest challenge facing the defense industry right now? What can be done to alleviate it?”, Palantir Technologies’ chief technology officer Shyam Sankar responded as follows:
“Actually, the biggest challenge is speed. Speed is a quality in itself. I think the Department of Defense would be better off spending twice as much money twice as fast, and we seem to have lost the ability to value time.”
Former Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher, who more recently chaired the US Congressional “Committee to Monitor Chinese Activities”, was later appointed to a senior position at Palantir.
On August 22, 2024, Gallagher told the Axios news website: “At Palantir, you have a rare, leading technology company that is unapologetic in its defense of the West and its belief that America is a force for good in this world and worth defending against our enemies.”
Gallagher, one of the most hawkish anti-China figures in the US Congress, supported billions of dollars in US military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
On November 13, 2024, Gallagher, also speaking to the “Axios” news website, said, “We need to recognize that America is a force for good in this world and that we have serious enemies. These enemies must be deterred and, if necessary, sometimes destroyed.”
Critics say that the increasing control of the “American Military-Industrial Complex” by private companies has led to a lack of democratic oversight. These partnerships were said to be mutually beneficial, both in terms of economic interests and strategic objectives, through increased military spending and innovative war technologies.
Critics also warn that these partnerships have significant consequences in terms of ethical issues and social impacts.
MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX and FOREIGN ENEMY
For the “American Military-Industrial Complex” to survive, it needs an external enemy. This external enemy has to be accepted by the American people.
For the United States after the Second World War, this external enemy was the Soviet Union.
During the Cold War, the “American Military-Industrial Complex” grew to an unprecedented size. The Cold War, which lasted for forty years, was waged on the basis of this perception of an external enemy.
This perception centered on Soviet Russia also dominated the cultural and literary life of the Cold War period in the United States. So much so that the American writer John Updike wrote “Rabbit, Run” “The Cold War gave you a reason to get up in the morning. Without the Cold War, what is the point of being an American?”
In the late 1980s, Georgi Arkadyevich Arbatov, who was involved in negotiating arms control and other agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union, told a meeting at the University of California-Irvine that they had a secret weapon that would leave the United States without enemies.
“We are going to do something terrible to you – we are going to deprive you of an enemy,” Arbatov, an advisor to Soviet heads of state and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, said in his speech.
Arbatov’s statement pointed to the strategic challenges the United States faced when there was no rival superpower to compete with.
The strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, realized through the power of a massive Military-Industrial Complex, had given the United States a purpose for forty years. But with the Soviet Union’s unilateral departure from the Cold War table and the subsequent disintegration of the Union, the United States was left without an external enemy.
Thus, it became clear what Arbatov meant by a secret weapon.
The “Warsaw Pact”, the Soviet Union’s military defense alliance, had disintegrated, but “NATO” was expanding into Russia’s new borders. The process leading to the Ukraine-Russia war began in those years.
At the time when Georgi Arkadyevich Arbatov made this statement, a striking observation was made by the American diplomat George Kennan, the architect of the strategy of containment of the Soviet Union.
George Kennan made this observation in his foreword to Norman Cousins’ book “The Pathology of Power”, published in 1987.
Much of the book highlights the problems caused by the failure of subsequent administrations to take US President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warnings about the “Military-Industrial Complex” seriously.
American taxpayers wanted security, Cousins argued, but the arms industry, with the help of powerful friends in government, used fear of external enemies to drive up the budget.
In his foreword to this book, George Kennan said:
“If the Soviet Union were to sink into the ocean tomorrow, the American military-industrial establishment would have to continue largely unchanged until another enemy was invented. To do otherwise would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
Kennan was right. America could not do without an enemy. In the 1980s, this external enemy was presented as “rising Japan”, but it did not work. Even though Japan had risen economically, it seemed far from being a match for the United States.
Since the end of the Cold War, the search for a militarily, economically and ideologically equivalent external enemy to justify the US’s high defense expenditures has been on.
By the 2000s, “China” was on the horizon as this external enemy.
The bipartisan foreign policy elites, the pillars of the American establishment, decided that “Rising China” was an “external enemy” on the grounds that it planned to oust the US from its leadership in the global system.
The People’s Republic of China, the object of the US’s New Cold War, was also the most important justification for the increase in US defense spending.
Michael Mann, a professor of sociology at the University of California, in his book “Power in the 21st century”, published in 2011 and translated into Turkish under the title “Power in the 21st century”, explained the source of US military spending as follows:
“The US will pay for this military spending as long as foreign capital comes to it and pays the dollar seigniorage differential. Otherwise Americans would have to pay more taxes, which may be politically impossible.”
Increased defense spending in the United States has led to cuts in social spending and an increase in inequality.
Restrictions on social spending funding are creating serious challenges for lower-income groups in accessing critical services such as education, health care and social security.
The Covid 19 pandemic showed just how broken the US health care system is for poorer people, especially “Black people”.
On the other hand, the increase in defense spending deepens social inequality through borrowing and tax policies.
Periodic increases in defense spending to feed the “Military-Industrial Complex”, the engine of imperialist foreign policy and “endless wars”, make the lives of ordinary Americans more difficult. This is the price that is being paid to feed the complex. Just like the hundreds of thousands of children and millions of people whose lives were snuffed out in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon.