Foreign Policy: What is the Military Industrial Complex?

[DA60]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGmsnzjofv8


Ike was right.

 

[Crovax]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGmsnzjofv8


Ike was right.

Actually he was wrong

Military spending is has been continually going down since he made that speech.

 

[ecofarm]

OP is whackjob spam. It's made in hopes that some idiot watches and believes the conspiracy theory. This garbage should be in the CT subforum.

 

[ttwtt78640]

Actually he was wrong

Military spending is has been continually going down since he made that speech.

Nonsense:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil...dia/File:InflationAdjustedDefenseSpending.PNG

 

[Coldwine]

Nonsense:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil...dia/File:InflationAdjustedDefenseSpending.PNG

You're using the gross amount of money spent adjusted for inflation, his graph uses % of GDP. Of course, his graph doesn't mention that the huge spike was during the Cold War, a time when we were engaged with another superpower and higher than average expenditures would be expected. It also doesn't show growth in GDP; one wouldn't expect military spending to jump if GDP jumped, but that would still register as a downturn in spending on his graph. Aside from all of this, the concept of the 'military industrial complex' doesn't necessitate that the spending goes ever higher, just that the money spent is less efficient than it ought to be and that it corrupts the people responsible for our foreign policy decisions.

 

[ttwtt78640]

You're using the gross amount of money spent adjusted for inflation, his graph uses % of GDP. Of course, his graph doesn't mention that the huge spike was during the Cold War, a time when we were engaged with another superpower and higher than average expenditures would be expected. It also doesn't show growth in GDP; one wouldn't expect military spending to jump if GDP jumped, but that would still register as a downturn in spending on his graph. Aside from all of this, the concept of the 'military industrial complex' doesn't necessitate that the spending goes ever higher, just that the money spent is less efficient than it ought to be and that it corrupts the people responsible for our foreign policy decisions.

The MIC suppliers create the MIC demand - we now see little relationship between actual national defense events (declared wars) and cost of those events. The MIC is like a perpetual motion machine in that it needs no outside influence to just keep it going.

 

[DA60]

Actually he was wrong

Military spending is has been continually going down since he made that speech.

Clearly you have NO IDEA what Ike was talking about.

He was not talking about the size of the budget.

Here is what he said:

'In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.'

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

He was talking about 'unwarranted influence' and 'misplaced power'...he mentioned nothing about spending too much.

:roll:

And on this score - he was DEAD right.

 

[Coldwine]

The MIC suppliers create the MIC demand - we now see little relationship between actual national defense events (declared wars) and cost of those events. The MIC is like a perpetual motion machine in that it needs no outside influence to just keep it going.

That's a possible explanation. There's also the argument to be made that it's the nature of the beast for spending to have a basement if we have a standing military and act as a superpower. What is interesting to me on the GDP graph is how less jagged the line becomes; that was the first blaring sign that GDP was going up and giving the graph a smoothness unreflective of actual spending trends, and it definitely was: https://ourworldindata.org/wp-conte...s-1871-2009-visualizing-economics-645x447.png.

It's especially damning that we're back at Cold War levels even when you remove Iraq and Afghanistan: https://images.washingtonpost.com/?...n.png&w=1484&op=resize&opt=1&filter=antialias

I don't think we'll ever get under the baseline that we developed in the mid 20th century unless there's a political upheaval to accompany the geopolitical shift. http://prospect.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/image001_3.png?itok=Ko_UTVPM

 

[ttwtt78640]

That's a possible explanation. There's also the argument to be made that it's the nature of the beast for spending to have a basement if we have a standing military and act as a superpower. What is interesting to me on the GDP graph is how less jagged the line becomes; that was the first blaring sign that GDP was going up and giving the graph a smoothness unreflective of actual spending trends, and it definitely was: https://ourworldindata.org/wp-conte...s-1871-2009-visualizing-economics-645x447.png.

It's especially damning that we're back at Cold War levels even when you remove Iraq and Afghanistan: https://images.washingtonpost.com/?...n.png&w=1484&op=resize&opt=1&filter=antialias

I don't think we'll ever get under the baseline that we developed in the mid 20th century unless there's a political upheaval to accompany the geopolitical shift. http://prospect.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/image001_3.png?itok=Ko_UTVPM

The "if" should be "while" in that (bolded above) statement. I see no possibility of changing either of those - we (as a nation) will remain a superpower and spend ever more on our standing military. The only thing that is likely to cause such a shift is our economic collapse since we can not trust the competing superpowers to respect anything other than our ability to prevent them from global expansion of their rule by force.

 

[Thoreau72]

A good video, not too long.

Yes, Ike's worst nightmares have come true with a vengeance. I just finished Peter Van Buren's book "We Meant Well" about his tour in Iraq with the State Department. It reminded me so much of how things were in Vietnam back in 1970.

Ike was right, and his warning was all the more legitimate and proper considering his military experience.