In 1789, Benjamin Franklin famously said that “in this world nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Franklin certainly got that right, but these days the idea needs to be updated and add the military industrial complex (MIC).
This term became part of the vernacular in 1960, when then Pres. Dwight Eisenhower warned against the establishment of “a military industrial complex” in his farewell address. Over the years, the MIC has become a monster of sorts, one that keeps growing. And as it does, so does the power it wields.
The MIC directly employs millions of people, many more indirectly, and does many hundreds of billions in business. In recent years alone it has benefited from increasing tensions with both Russia and China, from the war between Russia and Ukraine, from increasing tensions between Taiwan and China, North Korean threats to Japan and South Korea and Russian threats to some NATO allies.
And now it is benefitting from the war between Israel and Hamas. Military analysts say additional countries could join the fray and the conflict could C”V turn into a regional war.
As with any company, their goal is to do more business and earn greater profits than it has the year before, and that’s very likely because, in addition to all the suffering they are bound up with, they also generate enormous profits.
“A Racket”
The End of the American Dream website described the MIC this way. “Smedley D. Butler fought in four major conflicts, and in 1935 he astutely observed that ‘War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable and surely the most vicious. It is the only one that is international in scope. And it is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.’”
“The current war machine isn’t your grandfather’s MIC, not by a country mile,” The Nation wrote in May. “The military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned Americans about more than 60 years ago is still alive and well. But it’s consuming many more tax dollars and feeding far larger weapons producers than when Ike raised the alarm about the ‘unwarranted influence’ it wielded.”
Here are some amazing facts it noted. The Pentagon now accounts for more than half of the federal discretionary budget, leaving other essential programs in health, environmental care, job training and education to jostle for the remainder. In 2020, the Pentagon awarded defense firm Lockheed Martin contracts for $75 billion – these are more than the budgets for the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined.
If the MIC suddenly disappeared there would be a gaping hole in the economy. According to Richard C. Cook, who posted the following on scheerpost.com, currently there are some 2.1 million people employed by the defense industry. Acara Solutions, a major MIC recruiting firm, reports their average annual salary is $106,700 – 40% higher than the national average.
In 2022, the combined revenues of defense-related firms were $741 billion. No one knows exactly which products generated those, nor have independent analyses rated their efficacy. Cook, however, says US armaments used in the Ukraine war were not especially impressive. He adds that no modern U.S. weapons have ever been tested in war against comparable systems of an adversary.
The MIC also includes 1.37 million active uniformed personnel, and an additional 849,000 reservists. The US has 750 US military bases in more than 80 countries outside the US, and more than 100,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in Europe. The annual combined salaries and benefits of the military are $146 billion per year, and come with cost-of-living adjustments.
In addition, defense firms also employ civilians. More than 700,000 civilians work for the Dept. of Defense around the world, and together they earn some $70 billion. According to The Nation, the Government Accountability Office said there are 560,000 contractor employees. And there are hundreds of thousands of people in management and in other capacities. Contractors of various government agencies do defense-related work for the CIA, NSA, FBI and DHS to name just a few.
Increasing Tensions
The MIC is benefitting from increasing tensions between the US and both Russia and China. In fact, says The Nation, “It’s fabulous for business,” whether the dangers are real, hyped, or a pretext to increase military spending.
Meanwhile, new technologies being developed around the world are making their way into the military and increasing the need for higher spending on defense. For example, it’s been reported that both Russia and China have developed hypersonic missiles said to be capable of flying at a speed so fast that they can’t be stopped. Presumably this means that the only option is to develop even faster missiles or other technologies to counteract those.
Other developments also give the MIC reason to be optimistic. Among them: The technology used in emerging robotic technology and AI are improving rapidly and are increasingly being incorporated into military applications. The Pentagon is certainly giving a great deal of thought to those, and while it’s uncertain what systems they will opt for, the cost undoubtedly will be very high.
Is there any way out of the cycle of ever-increasing spending on the military? The MIC appears to have anticipated this challenge and has taken measures to prevent that. The defense industry is dominated by a small number of companies and they are using some of their profits to lobby Congress and to make campaign contributions to get their points across.
The Nation reports that the arms industry has donated more than $83 million to politicians in the last two election cycles, concentrating those funds among members of the House and Senate armed services committees. And they are spending nearly three times this number on lobbyists who understand the ins and outs of Washington very well.
There aren’t any visible efforts that would limit the influence of the MIC, at least in the immediate future. In fact, a four-star Air Force general recently predicted that the US and China would be at war in 2025. The point he was making was very obvious. And now there is growing talk about the need for a new draft.
Pres. Eisenhower said that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
Business cycles, recessions, and economic crises may come and go, but the MIC is here to stay.
Sources: endoftheamericandream.com; thenation.com; scheerpost.com
Gerald Harris is a financial and feature writer. Gerald can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
