What Eisenhower Really Meant About The Military-Industrial Complex

By Susan Eisenhower
Friday, January 14, 2011
Courtesy Of "The Washington Post"

I've always found it rather haunting to watch old footage of my grandfather, Dwight Eisenhower, giving his televised farewell address to the nation on Jan. 17, 1961. The 50-year-old film all but crackles with age as the president makes his earnest, uncoached speech. I was 9 years old at the time, and it wasn't until years later that I understood the importance of his words or the lasting impact of his message.

Of course, the speech will forever be remembered for Eisenhower's concerns about a rising "military-industrial complex," which he described as "a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions" with the potential to acquire - whether sought or unsought - "unwarranted influence" in the halls of government.

The notion captured the imagination of scholars, politicians and veterans; the military-industrial complex has been studied, investigated and revisited countless times, including now, at its 50th anniversary. Looking back, it is easy to see the parallels to our era, especially how the complex has expanded since Sept. 11, 2001. In less than 10 years, our military and security expenditures have increased by 119 percent. Even after subtracting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the budget has grown by 68 percent since 2001. In 2010, the United States is projected to spend at least $700 billion on its defense and security, the most, in real terms, that we've spent in any year since World War II.

However, at this time of increased concerns over our fiscal deficit and the national debt, Eisenhower's farewell words and legacy take on added significance.

Throughout his presidency, Eisenhower continually connected the country's security to its economic strength, underscoring that our fiscal health and our military might are equal pillars of our national defense. This meant that a responsible government would have to make hard choices. The question Eisenhower continued to pose about defense spending was clear and practical: How much is enough?

Early on, he realized that if the United States were to prevail in its existential standoff with the Soviet Union, we would have to prepare for a long game. Unlike our experience in World War II, which lasted less than four years, the Cold War would last many decades. Eisenhower understood that we were facing a marathon, not a sprint.

Moreover, the logic of nuclear deterrence made the conventional wars Ike had commanded in the 1940s obsolete. Now, there could be no margin for error; the Cold War brought with it different calculations, which were very costly by nature. These new realities meant that the United States would not only need to project power and resolve, but also had to ensure national solvency - no easy task for a country that had to modernize while assuming, for the first time, the mantle of global leadership.

The pressures Eisenhower faced during his presidency were enormous. Over the years, as the Soviet Union appeared to reach military parity with the United States, political forces in Washington cried out for greater defense spending and a more aggressive approach to Moscow. 

In response, the administration publicly asserted that there was no such thing as absolute security. "The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without," Eisenhower said. And he followed through, balancing the budget three times during his tenure, a record unmatched during the Cold War.

This theme was introduced at the start of Eisenhower's first term. On April 16, 1953, the new president spoke to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, just weeks after Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's death. In this "Chance for Peace" speech - one as important as the farewell address but often overlooked by historians - he seized the moment to outline the cost of continued tensions with the U.S.S.R. In addition to the military dangers such a rivalry imposed, he said, the confrontation would exact an enormous domestic price on both societies:

"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. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. . . . We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Contrary to many historians' suggestions, Ike's farewell speech was not an afterthought - it was the bookend to "Chance for Peace." As early as 1959, he began working with his brother Milton and his speechwriters to craft exactly what he would say as he left public life. The speech would become a solemn moment in a decidedly unsolemn time, offering sober warnings for a nation giddy with newfound prosperity, infatuated with youth and glamour, and aiming increasingly for the easy life.

"There is a reoccurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties," he warned in his final speech as president. ". . . 

But each proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs . . . balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future."

While the farewell address may be remembered primarily for the passages about the military-industrial complex, Ike was rising above the issues of the day to appeal to his countrymen to put the nation and its future first. "We . . . must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."

As I see my grandfather's black-and-white image deliver these words, a simple thought lingers in my mind: This man was speaking for me, for us. We are those grandchildren. We are the great beneficiaries of his generation's prudence and sacrifice.

Until today, perhaps, we have taken American leadership, dominance and prosperity for granted. In those intervening years, we rarely asked if our policies were sustainable over the long haul. Indeed, it has only been since the catastrophic financial meltdown in 2008 that we've begun to think about the generational responsibilities we have for our grandchildren's prosperity and welfare.

Eisenhower's words, from the beginning of his presidency to the end, come back to us from the mists of another era. They remind us, sadly, that sometimes we must revisit our past to learn what we have always known.

Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower, is an energy and international affairs expert and chairman emeritus of the Eisenhower Institute.

Eisenhower’s Lament

Posted by Christopher Preble
Courtesy Of "Cato-@-Liberty"

Spurred on by a new release of documents from the archives, the past few weeks have witnessed a renewed interest in the military-industrial complex (MIC), the term forever associated with Dwight David Eisenhower.

Or, at least, that should be the case. Eisenhower – the West Point graduate, career military officer, and hero of World War II – was one of the first to ever use the phrase, in a televised Farewell Address to the nation on January 17, 1961. Over the years, however, the MIC has become a mantra for progressives and left liberals, usually used in tandem with an assault on private enterprise, writ large, or as part of an elaborate conspiracy theory that equates crony capitalism with market economics. The left’s capture of the term has enabled too many on the right to dismiss it out of hand.

That is unfortunate. Dwight David Eisenhower was no liberal; far from it. And though the neoconservatives have attempted to expunge Ike from our collective memory, it is appropriate that his legacy is enjoying yet another revival. For what it’s worth, I’ll be doing my small part, at a half-day conference next month, and throughout 2011, to offer a perspective on the military-industrial complex that might appeal to devotees of limited, constitutional government.

This work will focus not just on Ike’s farewell address, but also on one of his first public addresses, the Chance for Peace Speech, delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April 1953. Taken together, the speeches highlight two of Eisenhower’s enduring concerns: opportunity costs, money spent on the military cannot be spent elsewhere; and the political and social costs of the United States becoming a garrison state, the creation of a permanent armaments industry, Ike feared, had already precipitated major changes in the nation’s economy, and threatened to change the nation itself.

Speaking in January 1961, during one of the darkest periods of the Cold War, Eisenhower viewed the MIC as a necessary evil. He viewed the threat posed by the Soviet Union and its sometime communist allies as sufficient justification for maintaining a large standing army, and a vast and technologically advanced Air Force and Navy. He also presided over a dramatic expansion of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, and realized (belatedly) that he had far too little control over those weapons and the men tasked with using them.

But I suspect that the permanence of the MIC would be most disturbing to President Eisenhower, were he with us now. Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans today spend more on the military than at any time since World War II, and more than twice as much — in inflation-adjusted dollars — than when Ike left office. The general-president clearly failed to convince his fellow Americans of the need to limit the military’s growth. For all practical purposes, the MIC won.

Here’s hoping that many Americans will rediscover Eisenhower, and take heed of his warning, starting in 2011. They could start by supporting efforts to refocus our military on a few core objectives and reduce the Pentagon’s budget.

Christopher Preble • December 21, 2010 @ 12:44 pm 

How To End A War

Eisenhower’s Way

By Jean Edward Smith
April 11, 2009, 7:00 pm
Courtesy Of The New York Times

President Obama’s unscheduled visit to Iraq suggests a president determined to see a war zone first hand and draw his own conclusions. Lincoln availed himself of that opportunity during the Civil War, but the most pertinent example may be Dwight D. Eisenhower, who toured the battlefront in Korea shortly before his inauguration. Ike had pledged to go to Korea if elected, and most voters assumed that the supreme commander — who had so effectively defeated the German Wehrmacht — would quickly dispatch the North Koreans and their Chinese allies.

Eisenhower may have thought that as well. Republican campaign rhetoric envisaged a unified Korea brought together by force of arms, if necessary, to insure “the future stability of the continent of Asia.” South Korean president Syngman Rhee shared that view, as did many in the nation’s foreign policy establishment.

Ike spent three days in Korea. He conferred with his old friends, Gen. Mark Clark and Gen. James Van Fleet, talked to division and regimental commanders, and ate C-rations at the front with G.I.’s from the 15th Infantry — Eisenhower’s old regiment. Most significantly, he flew along the battle line, roughly the 38th Parallel, in an artillery observation plane (the military equivalent of a Piper Cub) for a good look at the terrain. It was rocky, mountainous and forbidding — bristling with Chinese gun emplacements and heavily fortified. It reminded him of Tunisia during World War II, where an untested American Army had received its first comeuppance. “It was obvious that any frontal attack would present great difficulties,” said Ike afterwards.

Eisenhower drew the logical conclusion. “Small attacks on small hills would not win this war.” More important, “we could not stand forever on a static front and continue to accept casualties without any visible result.”

He returned to the United States determined to make peace. Truce negotiations had been launched in Korea 18 months earlier, but there had been no ceasefire. Casualties continued to mount. American losses (killed, wounded, and missing) stood at 75,000 in July 1951 when the truce talks began. They would eventually rise to 150,000, including an additional 12,000 dead, because of American insistence on fighting while the negotiations dragged on. To Ike, that was unconscionable. “We cannot tolerate the continuation of the Korean conflict,” he told his most intimate advisers en route home. “The United States will have to break this deadlock.”

Eisenhower played his cards close to his chest. He initiated a build-up of American forces in the region, ordered minor offensive actions, and instructed General Clark to step up the exchange of prisoners with the North.

In early April 1953 the Communists signaled they were ready to negotiate in earnest. Stalin had recently died and the new Soviet leadership apparently wanted to clear the table. Korea was one of several issues they sought to untangle. At a meeting of the National Security Council on April 8, Eisenhower announced his decision to agree to an armistice that would leave a divided Korea. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Defense Secretary Charles Wilson were strongly opposed. It was Dulles’s view that the Chinese had to be given “one hell of a licking” in order to maintain American credibility.

Eisenhower rejected the argument. “If Mr. Dulles and all his sophisticated advisers really mean that they cannot talk peace seriously, then I’m in the wrong pew,” he told an aide afterward. “Now either we cut out all this fooling around and make a serious bid for peace — or we forget the whole thing.”

One week later, speaking before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Eisenhower made his intentions public. In what many regard as the most important foreign policy address of his presidency, Ike blew the whistle on those who sought to win the cold war militarily. “Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed….”

On the other hand, “A world that begins to witness the rebirth of trust among nations can find its way to a peace that is neither partial nor punitive….The first great step along this way must be the conclusion of an honorable armistice in Korea.”

After Ike’s pronouncement peace negotiations at Panmunjom picked up speed. President Rhee attempted to derail the talks, but Eisenhower brought him to heel. If the South Korean government did not accept the armistice, said Ike, he would withdraw all American forces from the peninsula, discontinue military aid to the South Korean Army, and terminate all financial assistance. Rhee backed down.

On July 26, 1953 the truce was signed. Korea was divided along the existing battle line, roughly the 38th Parallel, and the guns went silent. Republicans on Capitol Hill were scathing in their criticism. Senator William Jenner of Indiana called the armistice the “last tribute to appeasement.” House Speaker Joe Martin complained that Ike had not sought victory. Some suggested that if President Truman had agreed to the terms Eisenhower accepted he would have been impeached.

Eisenhower ignored the criticism. “The war is over,” he told press secretary James Hagerty. “I hope my son is going to come home soon.”

Like President Obama, Eisenhower was an incrementalist who preferred to move gradually, often invisibly, within an existing policy framework. But on the question of war and peace, his views were categorical. He rejected the concept of limited war, and believed that American troops should never be sent into battle unless national survival was at stake.

After Eisenhower made peace in Korea, not one American serviceman was killed in action during the remaining seven and a half years of his presidency. No American president since Ike can make that claim.

In bringing peace to Korea — a peace that has endured for over fifty years — Eisenhower asserted his personal authority as commander in chief. Perhaps only a five-star general could ignore his party’s old guard and overrule the country’s national security establishment, almost all of whom believed that military victory in Korea was essential. But Ike was an experienced card player. He could recognize a losing hand when he saw it, and he knew when to fold his cards. Only President Obama knows what he saw in Iraq, and only he can decide whether his hand should be folded.