A reminder that the US military-industrial complex still has way more power and influence than it should

The experienced national security journalist Fred Kaplan passes along a story that probably will not cause much of a ripple in national politics. But it's a reminder about how important it is - maybe I should say would be - for Congress and the Executive Branch to exercise careful control over the Pentagon in a way that was not focused on the profits of the military-industrial complex: The National Security Disaster You Probably Missed Last Week Slate 07/19/2021.

Dwight Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell Presidential address made "military-industrial complex" a familiar phrase in the American political vocabulary:

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 State 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 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.

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 huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. [my emphasis]

And from the controversies over the Vietnam War in the 1960s through the 1980s which produced the Iran-Contra scandal that arose from The Reagan-Bush Amdinistration's efforts to avoid Congressional oversight over its dirty wars in Central America in particular, it was considered mainstream for Congress to exercise constraints on military policy. I don't mean to imply that Congress pursued an anti-militarist policy. They didn't.

But the level of idolatry of the military and the neglect of critical Congressional oversight that has characterized the last 30 years is a product of the "End of History," the end of the Warsaw Pact in the Revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union. There was a wave of domestic military base closures during the Bush-Quayle Administration that gave a glimpse of what a move toward demilitarizing the federal budget could achieve. That particular moment had a least of a bit of what had been a pacifist's dream a few years before.

But it didn't last long. The sudden shift in the world power balance meant that the US strategists saw fewer constraints on the use of military power, and the number of military interventions expanded. And then the 9/11 attacks and the US response kicked that process into overdrive.

But the fact that the political and media establishment's are negelecting important needs doesn't make the needs go away. Climate change is proceeding on its accelerating course. The nuclear arms race is growing and is an even more severe immediate danger to humanity than climate than climate change. The cold fact is that making the world more and more dangerous is profitable for powerful defense contractors.

Reducing their power is an incredibly difficult task for the political system to take on. But it's an absolutely necessary one.