How the permanent armaments industry keeps the United States of America engaged in endless conflict

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry 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."

These were the words of then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address in which he warned the American people of the perils of the military- industrial complex. Such a relationship between the military and defense industry increased the incentives for endless war. As Eisenhower campaigned on ending combat operations on the Korean peninsula and favored an overall cautious foreign policy, it would not come as a surprise then that Eisenhower would be concerned by the heightened influence held by the armaments industry.

The military-industrial complex is a relationship in which lawmakers are motivated campaign contributions from the defense industry to provide funding to the Department of Defense for military spending, and the defense industry profits from their lobbying due to the Department of Defense paying various defense firms for the production of military hardware and other services. Such a state of affairs incentivizes an interventionist foreign policy due to conflict generating demand for the equipment produced by the defense industry. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first century, there had been no shortage of conflicts that were motivated, at least in part, by the military-industrial complex.

The Vietnam War, which the United States entered into over a false flag in which the American government accused North Vietnamese forces of launching two unprovoked attacks on the U.S.S. Maddox, saw President Johnson's personal wealth increase due his investing in the kinds of products required to wage war. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush ordered American forces to Somalia under the guise of humanitarianism justify maintaining the size and expenditures of the post-Cold War military establishment. Nearly a decade later, America would engage in a global campaign across the Greater Middle East in which the objectives and the enemy were left poorly defined, seemingly to drag the conflict out so the defense industry could make as large a profit as possible.

What's more, is that the military-industrial complex continues to guide our foreign policy in the present. As it stands, the defense establishment and their allies in corporate media are in the process of manufacturing a new ideological bogeyman to justify defense spending. With tensions rising with Russia, China, and Iran, there is real danger that the powers that be may lie our nation into yet another forever war to justify their wages.

Republished from Grant Klusmann's Substack, with thanks!