Question for 50s Historians on Ike's "Military-Industrial Complex" speech

[DivinBreuvage]

I heard about this speech many years ago, and having only a shallow knowledge of America in the 1950s I always assumed he was simply making a very insightful prediction. Over the past couple of years, however, I've started to wonder if he was speaking from personal experience: if he had actually witnessed or learned of things that made him issue this warning. Can anyone offer any insight?

In the unlikely event that anyone on DU hasn't heard of this speech, here is the relevant portion:

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, 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.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial 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.

Full text of the speech: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm

[glarius]

1. Did you know Ike's son John is backing John Kerry?

Here's a link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/29/152418/939

[H2O Man]

2. Ike knew that billions of dollars

were being invested in military projects. Many of the industries which enjoyed military contracts, for example, expected Nixon to win the 1960 election. This would have allowed the TFX contracts (for the Tactical Fighter Experimental "fighter" jet) to have gone to Boeing. This would have put 4 billion into the republican-backing industry.

JFK had McNamara work with Labor Sec. Goldberg to find another 2.5 billion from navy procurement funding, add it to the 4 to make a $6.5 billion investment, and then awarded it to General Dynamics and Grumman, because they knew it would benefit democratic candidates for president and both houses of congress in a better position.

This is just one example of how Ike saw that the military-industrial complex would be able to manipulate domestic politics. Remember that this decision was one of the things JFK's enemies hated the most about him. He threatened their domestic economic policies.

[slackmaster]

3. It was a visionary speech on many levels

Ike saw how the fear of nuclear anhilation was already in the '50s being exploited by corporations to leverage their access to extract more and more money from the federal government. I think he understood that by the end of WWII the USA was more than a generation ahead of the largely agrarian Soviet Union in economic and social development. Despite the USSR's jump-started nuclear weapons program I believe Ike understood that the fundamentally flawed Soviet system would doom it sooner or later, that it could never and would take us over by military force; but it made the perfect Bogeyman to whip Americans' inherent xenophobia into near panic.

The big defense contractors were happy to participate in the carnival of doomesday predictions, cheerfully taking on the role of snake-oil salesmen who just happened to have the perfect solution: Peace through strengh. Superior military technology. Rockets into space, the next frontier. Every small leapfrog the Soviets made: Sputnik I, Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight, the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc. was leveraged effectively by the corporations and their proxies in Washington to further entrench them as the fourth branch of government.

The free flow of personnel between defense contractors and the DoD continues today for good and bad reasons. It's great to have knowledgable, experienced people in sensitive positions, but there's still the problem of temptation to use aggressively that which is supposed to be, under the Constitution, used only for defensive purposes. The present pre-emptive wars, the color alert system, the Department of Homeland Security, making everyone remove their shoes before boarding a plane, constant talk of "terror" in the media, are an obvious, linear continuation of that process. The Evil Empire is gone; long live the Faceless Terrorist Threat by people who look different, speak different languages, and all hate us.

Wake up, America. Ike was right in the 1950s. He's still right.