State Within a States What is the Military-Industrial Complex?
Gottlieb, Sanford
THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX today commands power far beyond the measure it knew when President Eisenhower warned in his Farewell Address of 1961 against its "unwarranted influence."...
...H H OW REALISTIC IS IT to assume that the outcome of this political-economic competition is not yet determined by the weight of the military-industrial complex...
...Yet, once the Senate vote on ABM was past, opposition to other military measures largely dissipated...
...STATE WITHIN A STATE military-industrial complex, so may men in the executive branch and Congress make decisions more consciously in the 1970s which would help to dismantle it...
...Honeywell's thermostats are for friendly civilian customers...
...The beginnings of coordination among the opposition in both houses was thus established...
...Because of the institutionalized momen tum of the complex, the task is obviously difficult...
...The complex is a web of political and economic relationships among defense industries and associations, the military and civilian leadership in the Pentagon, the Atomic Energy Commission, that part of Congress which deals with the interests of the military, some labor unions, universities, 2 "think tanks" heavily dependent upon military expenditures, and the organizations of veterans, reservists, and superpatriots which define their role of promoting "peace through [armed] strength...
...In short, the peace groups can help persuade the domestic lobbies that they are the joint underdogs in a very tough competition...
...For the first time, MCPL hired professional staff to service its members for the military debate...
...Between 1960 and 1967, 38 companies received more than $1 billion each in prime military contracts...
...This agreement and other secret commitments by the executive branch came to light only through the careful work of a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee chaired by Stuart Symington...
...When the Kerner Commission issued its report following the explosions in the ghettos in 1967, it attached no cost estimates to its recommendations for programs to provide more housing, education, health care, jobs, and transportation for black Americans...
...State officials attributed this resistance to "opposition to new taxes of any kind during an economic slump, disgust with student disorders in both colleges and high schools, opposition to busing and integration, and misgivings about the effectiveness of educational institutions...
...No responsible administration official nor any member of Congress can afford, in my opinion, to take that gamble with the future security of our nation and the future safety of our people...
...This explains in part why strong public opposition to the war in Indochina, to high levels of military spending, and to worldwide military commitments has not been translated into basic changes of governmental policy...
...the U.S.S.R., 2,000...
...Disadvantaged by the tax structure, harried by unemployment, convinced that their taxes were spent on welfare recipients rather than on services for hardworking, obedient citizens, white workers constituted one of the most insecure and fearful groups in American society...
...The true picture of the fiscal 1971 budget, according to Hatfield, was: 48.4 percent for current military expenditures...
...Steel can be shifted easily to civilian use, but scientists, engineers, and managers who have spent years working under the conditions that prevail in defense industry may require considerable retraining before they can perform tasks relevant to the satisfaction of human needs...
...The military-mindedness of civilians was then, and still remains, a far greater force than the military itself...
...Citizens, too, share some of the blame for their failure to sustain an organized effort to pressure and/ or replace the decision-makers in Washing ton...
...Together, the lack of funds and skills de pleted the public sector at the very time the country's social and racial problems were growing more volatile...
...11 New York Times, September 24, 1970...
...the United States must defend the "free world" against aggressive Communism...
...Less ambitious, the Nixon administration cut back to 1 1/z wars...
...American Aviation vs...
...When the vote was cast in August, the opposition failed by only one vote to stop a major new weapons system...
...One by-product of the pursuit of security through military means has been increased secrecy in foreign policy...
...On the other hand, the managements that have been nurtured on federal largesse are reluctant to endure the vagaries of the commercial market, while the federal government has been both permissive and overprotective toward its industrial offspring...
...The Defense Department deployed 339 lobbyists on Capitol Hill and more than 6,000 public relations men in the U.S...
...This estimate happens to equal the sum invested in the military during the lifetime of the postwar generation...
...Seymour Melman, Pentagon Capitalism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970...
...In the Senate, the campaign, led by Senators John Sherman Cooper and Philip Hart, focused for months on halting ABM...
...any strategy that seeks to reduce the power of the military-industrial complex must be based on the urgency of transferring much of its substance to the civilian sector...
...They found heroin and Molotov cocktails more immediate threats than the Soviet SS-9...
...Army and Navy studies concluded that 200 relatively secure seaborne missiles on each side would constitute an adequate nuclear deterrent...
...SANFORD GOTTLIEB military...
...Clearly, the American people were paying high prices for uncertain service...
...De-fuse It...
...The will to cut the Pentagon's funds means fewer defense contracts, fewer bases, fewer lobbyists, fewer congressional allies...
...16.4 percent for the costs of past wars...
...These officials must choose between new weapons systems and new educational programs, between restrictions on presidential authority to send troops abroad and open-ended commitments, between bailing out Lockheed and writing off a bad investment...
...cit., pp...
...Very little had changed except the rhetoric...
...Simultaneously, it sought their votes at election time...
...Under the best of conditions, it may take a firm two years to switch to a different line of work...
...STATE WITHIN A STATE scientists who developed the nuclear-pow ered missile-launching submarine were not available to develop antipollution devices...
...For example, the establishment of a single congressional committee to review all requests for funds would reduce the influence of the all-powerful Armed Services committees and the Defense subcommittees of the Appropriations committees...
...The number of prime defense contractors soared to 22,000, served by 100,000 subcontractors...
...Others were businessmen aroused over the increasingly depleted central cities...
...The affair was sponsored by the Washington Chapter of the Air Force Association...
...The steel used for missiles was not available for housing...
...10-13...
...Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1970), pp...
...The needs of poor blacks were so great that, whatever else was required to meet them, a massive investment of federal funds was a basic ingredient...
...Some were active in pressure groups working for peace, quality education, mass transportation, adequate housing, and a clean environment...
...South Carolina has indeed been the seat of many military installations, but Chairman Rivers also permitted some important pieces of the complex to move to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Texas, California, Washington, and Alaska...
...Whether these unions can carry their memberships with them toward this new stance remains one of the questions of the next decade...
...The government makes "progress payments" for expenses incurred rather than work performed, so the defense companies often do not have to borrow working capital...
...Furthermore, the corporations that sell to both the Pentagon and civilian markets add to the problem by refusing to reveal financial records for the two different kinds of work...
...But even the wealthiest nation in the world has finite resources...
...EVEN IF THE DEFENSE FIRMS' financial records were opened to public scrutiny, the hidden benefits would not necessarily show...
...a demonstration by the Army's Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps...
...W W E CAN ANTICIPATE that this claim will not go unchallenged...
...Nevertheless, a number of unions began to take increasingly outspoken positions against military expenditures and for a large budget to meet human needs...
...Lockheed led the parade with a seven-year total of $10.6 billion...
...War Peace Report is one of the most perceptive and responsible periodicals devoted to matters of war and peace...
...If blacks began to pull together more effectively for their own interests, however, they might meet more resistance from working-class whites...
...Yet the top 100 contractors received about 65 percent of the contracts awarded in 1967...
...That the President sometimes finds this posture uncomfortable in no way diminishes his power to rearrange the strands...
...The Bulova Watch Company manufactures parts for projectiles...
...While the United States ranks first in the world in gross national product and military spending, it is 23rd from the top in infant mortality and 11th in the number of physicians per inhabitant...
...Occasionally, the informed observer glimpses part of the reality...
...In presenting the fiscal year 1971 budget to Congress, including somewhat reduced military expenditures of $73.6 billion, the Nixon administration claimed that it was in the process of reordering national priorities...
...The employees of these firms, however, cannot simply be abandoned as military spending shifts or declines...
...In the process, the military-industrial complex assumes a self-perpetuating momentum of its own, resisting control from any quarter, public or private...
...These questions will have to be continually posed, and answered, through all available public forums...
...The challengers had not yet developed the staying power of the complex...
...Here, the peace groups can play a crucial role as catalysts...
...According to former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, 400 of these weapons could annihilate a third of the Soviet population...
...T T HE FIRST ORGANIZED CITIZENS' ATTACK on military spending was launched in 1969...
...In response to a request from Senator William Proxmire, chairman of the Subcommittee on Economy in Government of the Joint Economic Committee, the Pentagon released in February 1969 a list of 2,072 retired regular military officers who were employed by the 95 biggest defense contractors...
...Members of Congress became conditioned to the automatc "aye" vote whenever the executive branch and the chairmen of the powerful Armed Services Committees discovered another "foreign threat" and recommended another military affiance or another weapons system...
...According to Gordon Rule, a civilian procurement official for the Pentagon in 1968, "No matter how poor the quality, how 6 The figures in this paragraph are from Kaufman, op...
...In pursuit of the cold-war version of national security, American decision-makers pressed single-mindedly for ever-greater armed might...
...This will result in a new reduction in expenditures for conventional forces...
...and abroad...
...Such a glimpse proves that a truer picture is revealed when defense profits are calculated as a percentage of return on the contractor's often minimal investment rather than as a percentage of the government-paid cost...
...Many of the po tential troops for such a struggle seem too dis couraged, cynical, or tired to wage it...
...Under the leadership of Joseph Clark and the Washington staff members of its affiliates, the Coalition became an important counterweight to the military-industrial complex...
...The leaders of the complex are not hard to find...
...reports on the United Nations, development, population, environment and arms control...
...This weakness of will augments the image of an omnipotent enemy—ironically, at a moment when it is on the defensive for the first time...
...Agnew said he wanted "to lay to rest the ugly, vicious, dastardly rumors" that Rivers "is trying to move the Pentagon piecemeal to South Carolina...
...The military-industrial complex is a midtwentiethcentury institution...
...But a combination of an increasingly deadly arms race, the mounting pollution and decay in the megalopolis, and the frustration and despair among many Americans mean that the turn must be made during the 1970s...
...Four months before the first meeting of the "Fearless Five," the Coalition on National Priorities and Military Policy was born in Washington...
...In seeking to generate the kind of sustained pressures on the decision-makers in Washington which can reverse the trend toward militarization, the peace and newpriorities forces must work against a deadline...
...By the end of the decade, the United States could launch 4,200 long-range nuclear warheads...
...Longestablished companies in the private sector, literally household names, operate largely invisible military sidelines...
...After discussions among themselves and with specialists, they sent Chairman Rivers a letter outlining their goals...
...An incestuous relationship between military procurement officers and their civilian counterparts in defense firms also contributes to high prices and high profits...
...Upon retirement, many military regulars go to work for the big contractors, and many top officials in the defense firms advance their careers by shuttling to civilian jobs in the Pentagon before returning to government-subsidized corporate life...
...How much is it worth to society to purchase a specific weapons system, as against expenditures for air pollution facilities, quality education, or national health insurance...
...The complex and its ideological supporters, the pressure groups for peace and new priorities, and those who would solve all public problems by reducing taxes to stimulate private consumption will vie for the tax dollar...
...Elected and appointed officials—not some secret, faceless cabal—continue to make decisions about public policies and resources...
...5 The system of procurement in defense industry has provided high profits at low risk to the corporations, while passing along tremendous cost overruns to the taxpayers...
...The bigger, more modern defense contractors who make up the vital center of the military-industrial complex have thus laid claim to any "peace dividend" in the 1970s, while the smaller components of the complex struggle to hold what they have...
...White workers form an important part of a tax revolt, which was directed largely against expenditures for education in the late 1960s...
...Former military officers thus enter positions in which they may negotiate defense contracts with friends and old associates...
...Do more weapons make us more secure...
...Faced with a new antimilitarist mood in Congress and the country, as well as severe budgetary pressures caused by anticipated deficits, the Nixon administration cut further into the military budget, adopted the rhetoric of "new priorities," and elaborated a new military strategy...
...and veering away within a few miles of the border) deterred a Soviet attack...
...President Nixon named one top defense-firm official, David Packard, to the second highest post in the Defense Department...
...and the mix of business bias with messianic idealism in the American political leadership...
...The sheer volume of sales to the Pentagon helps the contractors establish credit and maintain their work force...
...Some of the products of this industrial hybrid were designed to reach the moon, most to reach the Soviet Union and China...
...Since congressmen so willingly granted the Pentagon whatever it wished, canny legislators successfully financed civilian programs in scientific research and education with Defense Department funds...
...See The Pentagon Watchers, Leonard S. Rodberg and Derek Shearer, eds...
...While the complex has developed a life of its own, it has not completely escaped the influence of the democratic process...
...If he tries to abandon the web, however, he can expect massive resistance, for too many careers are wound up in it...
...Its institutional foundations were laid by a memorandum on "Scientific and Technological Resources as Military Assets" from Army Chief of Staff Dwight Eisenhower in April 1946,8 and by the National Security Act of 1947, which unified the armed services, coordinated military research and industrial production, and established the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.* The National Security Council, which brought together the secretary of state and the civilian and military chiefs of the Pentagon to advise the president, represented the institutionalized fusion of military and foreignpolicy interests...
...How should they be defended...
...The best paid a Quoted by Kaufman, op...
...On August 12, 1970, the ballroom of the Washington Hilton Hotel was filled with them, at a three-hour luncheon of 1,150 generals, congressmen, and defense contractors to honor the late Congressman Mendel Rivers, then chairman of the House Armed Services Committee...
...One amendment was ultimately adopted on the House floor...
...GE also happens to be the third largest defense contractor...
...The Soviet Union has been building up its development and production of military weapons...
...If they do not, the federal government will be obliged during this decade to choose between permanent subsidies for the costly monster it has created or making it shift for itself in the cruel world of free enterprise...
...For the first time since the nuclear test-ban debate, the relationship between weaponry and national security reentered the public dialogue...
...The attack was spurred by growing public disenchantment with the Vietnam war, high taxes, inflation, cost overruns, and such military blunders as the accidental killing of 6,400 sheep in Utah by nerve gas and the designation of the Seattle, Chicago, and Boston suburbs as sites for the Administra tion's proposed antiballistic missile program...
...Meeting for the first time on June 10, 1969, Democrats Robert Leggett, Lucien Nedzi, and Otis Pike, and Republicans Charles Whalen and Robert Stafford sought a unified approach to such problems as military redundancy and marginal programs...
...9 The Administration will explain this shift primarily in terms of a defense-policy review that has resulted in a modified assessment of the Communist threat on land...
...In the late 1960s, they watched the ghettos burn although no enemy missiles had penetrated our defenses...
...For while the free use of government land and equipment surely contributes to corporate profits, it does not appear on the books...
...Although he did not spin this web, the President is, in effect, the spider who sits astride it...
...The five then prepared nine amendments...
...Without broadening their mandate to include purely domestic questions, they can "lobby the lobbies" in the domestic field in order to explain where the tax dollars have really gone and to urge creation of human-needs coalitions at the grass roots and in Washington...
...17 percent for human resources, and 18.2 percent for all other expenditures including agriculture, commerce, etc...
...The military was receiving half of each federal tax dollar (excluding the costs of past wars) and more than half the funds spent in the nation on research...
...For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also...
...Not only were the savings from a diminishing conflict in Vietnam being channeled into programs of human need, it said, but more of the budget dollar (41 percent) would be spent on "human resources" than on national defense (36 percent...
...cit., and Melman, op...
...In some cases the amount of government-owned property exceeds the contractors' investment...
...Yet, such exchanges are the stuff of which coalitions are forged...
...The big corporation that sells an entire weapons system to the Pentagon makes much higher profits than the smaller firm that sells soldiers' shirts, but no one knows how much higher...
...Lord Caradon proposes "A Road from War in the Middle East...
...2) the quality of life within the United States...
...Among the treats were: music by several Air Force bands...
...It reflects the twin premises of the Cold War: military power is the primary component of national security...
...Potential allies for this new constituency could be found within two groups that had been growing increasingly hostile to each other: poor blacks and white workers...
...They all seek federal funds...
...Concerned with peace and a new set of priorities, it included many of the well-educated and affluent professionals, academics, housewives, and students who had supported Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy in 1968, reinforced more recently by a circle of the ecology SANFORD GOTTLIEB minded...
...ANOTHER CONSTITUENCY, however, had a different view of the security of our nation and the safety of our people...
...While the legislative victories by the dissidents in both houses were exceedingly slim, the pressure did succeed in convincing the House Appropriations Committee to cut $1 billion from the bill and in moving the Ad 497 SAN1 ORD GOTTLI$g ministration to trim its chemical-bacteriological warfare program...
...Richard Kaufman, a highly competent staff economist on Senator Proxmire's subcommittee has explained the difference: An example of the difference was demonstrated in a 1962 tax court case, North 'Kaufman, op...
...Similarly, the public was unaware that the Johnson administration had followed a "2½warsat-once strategy" until former Budget Director Charles Schultze returned to private life and spoke out...
...The outcome of this competition will determine whether the military-industrial complex can be controlled and, ultimately, overcome...
...Its clout at the end of the sixties could be measured by a few figures.' Americans were spending an annual average of $400 each on "defense...
...Just as men in the executive branch and Congress made decisions in the 1940s and 'S0s which, in part unwittingly, laid the foundations for the 10 John Herbers, "Survey Finds Voters Across the Nation Opposed Bonds or Taxes for Education," New York Times, November 8, 1970...
...Renegotiation Board...
...Matthew 6:21 in history...
...Edward Kennedy, "National Priorities and the Defense Budget: The Need for New Realities," Congressional Record, February 26, 1970...
...a 15-page printed program in red, white, and blue, listing 75 defense-oriented firms whose "cooperation" 2 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been among the 100 top contractors for years, ranking 67th in the fiscal year 1969 as the result of Pentagon contracts totaling $100.5 million, ac cording to the Defense Department...
...It disburses vast sums for production and research, extends its influence to "every city, every statehouse, every office of the Federal Government" (as described by President Eisenhower), dominates American foreign policy, and even assumes for itself the right to spy on the political activities of private citizens and public officials...
...And the diversion of these resources to the military did nothing to enhance the nation's will to meet its in ternal problems...
...At the same time, however, the Nixon Pentagon plans to increase conventional firepower and to expand strategic nuclear forces to include MIRVs on land- and sea-based missiles, a supersonic bomber (B-i) to replace the B-52, the antiballistic missile sys 9 See Juan Cameron, "The Armed Forces' Reluctant Retrenchment," Fortune, November 1970...
...Abundance fosters generosity...
...A myriad of voluntary organizations exists in the domains of environment, education, health, housing, and social welfare...
...In the 1970 elections, a New York Times survey of the 50 states found that voters generally rejected state proposals to increase taxes or issue new bonds for education...
...No comprehensive study has been done, especially of the giant firms that receive most of the contract awards...
...231-34...
...Yet, at least during the 1970s, it will not be impossible...
...One cannot claim, however, that these weapons of mass destruction— buttressed by tens of thousands of tactical nuclear weapons, a two-ocean navy, conventional forces, chemical and biological warfare agents, 3,000 military bases, and more than 40 military alliances—prevented a long guerrilla war in Southeast Asia or conflicts in the Middle East, or that they stopped the Russians from repressing the Hungarian revolt or the Czechoslovak liberalization, or halted the establishment of a Communist regime in the Western Hemisphere...
...grenade launchers and classified military electronic equipment...
...In 1968, seven presidents and five vice-presidents of these "think tanks" had previously held high positions in the Defense Department...
...10 Yet, the mix of socioeconomic resentments directed against educational outlays did not seem to extend to other governmental activities...
...In 1960, less than a year before he became President Kennedy's science adviser, Jerome Wiesner wrote in Daedalus that U.S...
...If the managements move to convert, they wean themselves away from dependence on military contracts...
...In the House, the opposition was spearheaded by a dissident group of five members of the Armed Services Committee...
...But that lesson has just begun to come home to the American public...
...Thanks to a detailed analysis by Senator Mark Hatfield, the Administration's deceitful use of budget figures was revealed in an address by the Oregon Republican to a town meeting in Corvallis on February 10, 1970...
...In Recent Issues: A.P...
...Richard F. Kaufman, "As Eisenhower was Saying...
...Unless the nation is demilitarized in the coming decade, its problems may well be insoluble...
...The third area of mass persuasion, conversion of military production and facilities to civilian uses, requires a sophisticated campaign on behalf of planning by defense contractors and by government at all levels...
...Yet the national will to shift priorities is infinitely more important than altering this parliamentary procedure...
...Nor is it coincidental that the country with the highest productivity rate per employee—Japan—has spent the smallest share of its gross national product on the military, while the United States, which has spent more than eight times as much as Japan on the military in percentage of GNP, has a rate of productivity only one-third as great...
...a heady sense of power in Washington after defeat of the Axis and the start of the atomic era...
...During the debate in the House, some of the "Fearless Five" worked with Members of Congress for Peace Through Law (MCPL), a bipartisan, bicameral group founded by former Senator Joseph Clark (D.-Pa...
...Whatever its effects on the international scene, the trillion-dollar investment in the military fueled a huge industrial pyramid at home...
...8 Military research and production have spread far beyond the hybrid firms that sell most of their products to Washington...
...The complex first grew up in response to America's emergence as a major power after World War II and the Cold War that followed...
...STATE WITHIN A STATE or "participation" made the gathering possible, and a speech by Vice-President Spiro Agnew...
...Each amendment was granted 30-60 seconds of discussion in committee...
...the tax court found that the company had realized profits of 612 percent and 802 percent on its investment in two succeeding years...
...Rivers's answer to the "Fearless Five," as they became known, was to have his staff draw up the military authorization bill and refuse to show it to the dissidents until the evening before it appeared in committee...
...Yet, apathy among the masses of blacks and disunity among the handful of the organized had so far rendered them largely impotent as a pressure group for change...
...The 16 research centers supported by Pentagon funds also provide opportunities for career advancement...
...The 8 Ibid...
...While defense contracts spread throughout American industry, the giant contractors took the biggest slice of the pie...
...The case for the military-minded was argued by Deputy Director of Defense David Packard at the annual convention of the Instrument Society of America on October 26,1970: Clearly, the world is no less hostile than it has been...
...it also animated an institution new to American life, the military-industrial complex...
...Then 5 million men and women were serving in the armed forces and as civilian employees of the Pentagon, and 4 million were working in defense industries, with millions more economically dependent upon them...
...One way to reduce the political gamble woud be to limit defenseindustry cutbacks...
...War Correspondent Peter Arnett speculates on "How Will the Vietnam War End...
...Indeed, the complex has led to a wholly new form of corporation: a government-created, governmentsubsidized hybrid earning private profits from the tax coffers and unprepared to compete for commercial markets...
...The first requires that a whole series of questions, postponed for a generation, now must enter the public dialogue...
...In the past there obviously have been American military establishments, defense industries, war-hawk congressmen, and superpatriotic organizations...
...The will to shift funds to domestic programs means that the nation can at last begin to discover whether its problems are susceptible to solution...
...its antipersonnel weapons, torpedoes, and Poseidon missile parts are for the enemy...
...The latter praised Rivers for his "willingness to go to bat for the so-called and often discredited military-industrial complex...
...Whole new industries such as aerospace, and new corporate giants such as General Dynamics were nurtured on huge defense contracts, most of them negotiated directly rather than subjected to the risks of competitive bidding, with their way smoothed by the free use of government land and equipment and by tax write-offs for glossy advertisements touting their new, sophisticated products...
...Defense industry is fed by the state, and the state by defense industry...
...Subscription to War/Peace (I year, 10 issues) $5.00...
...Dow Chemical has abandoned napalm...
...The reason for the huge return on investment was the Defense Department policy of supplying both fixed and working capital to many of the larger contractors...
...The second area requires a more organizationaI, less intellectual effort...
...In supporting measures to cushion the impact of layoffs on these employees, the unions that represent them find another area of overlapping interest with the peace and new-priorities groups which have promoted conversion planning...
...At the present time the Soviet build-up of strategic nuclear forces and naval forces is more rapid than it has ever been...
...A political struggle requires a strategy...
...THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX has become something like a state within the state...
...An unspoken thought in this presentation was the political calculation of the effects of unemployment...
...In the course of this process, Congress abdicated many of its powers, and the executive branch emerged as the primary force in American government...
...It will ask allies to share more of the defense burden and is prepared to grant them increased military assistance...
...Persuasion of the voters should deal with three areas: (1) the concept of national security...
...We Mt Guard Against Unwarranted Influence by the Military-Industrial Complex," New York Times Magazine, June 22, 1969...
...There will be a three-way competition during the 1970s for the resources of the public sector...
...The Nixon Pentagon prepared for a longterm shift in strategy that would cut costs in manpower while bolstering its firepower...
...Maurice F. Strong discusses "Facing the Global Environment Crisis" . Richard N. Gardner asks "Free Trade by 2000 A.D...
...Motorola makes components for 40mm...
...They do not have forever, nor do they face inevitable defeat...
...Some structural changes would help, but they are minor...
...WAR/PEACE REPORT, Dept WS, 218 East 18th St., New York, N.Y...
...This strategy was based on the novel notion that the United States should have the capability of simultaneously fighting conventional land wars in Europe and Asia and a guerrilla war somewhere in the "Third World," while holding its nuclear power in reserve...
...Lavish government subsidies, a tendency to deal directly with a single contractor rather than engage in competitive bidding, and permissiveness toward shoddy performance led to a total of almost $24 billion in cost overruns on 38 weapons systems as of March 31, 1970...
...One can always claim that the Minuteman and Titan missiles and the B-52s (which, until the Kennedy administration, tested Soviet defenses by flying directly toward the U.S.S.R...
...S S DEFENSE IS TODAY defined in terms of deterrence, it is impossible to judge whether the protection of the United States during this period did indeed require such an awesome force...
...The major effort—to be undertaken at a time when many Americans feel an undefined malaise and are ready to examine their collective problems—must be directed at persuading the voters, and through them the Executive branch and Congress, that most of the federal budget should be spent on people rather than on armed forces...
...STATE WITHIN A STATE tern (unless limited by an accord with the Soviet Union), an underwater missile system (ULMS), and a new airborne continental defense system (AWACS...
...General Electric makes reentry vehicles for MIRV, the hydraheaded missile that will generate chronic fear of surprise attack in an adversary's military establishment...
...If all of these sophisticated strategic weapons are developed and deployed, the cost will far overshadow the savings expected to result from a reduction in manpower...
...Is the arms race itself a threat to the peace...
...In addition, according to Senator Proxmire, "there is the subtle or unconscious temptation to the officer still on active duty...
...After Hatfield excluded the trust funds from current governmental expenditures, placed veterans payments as well as the interest on the national debt under the category of the costs of past wars, moved the expenditures for the draft system into the military column, and made other adjustments, his figures looked far different from the Administration's...
...Federal and state governments will have to finance retraining programs, relocation costs, and extended unemployment benefits for the production workers, engineers, and scientists laid off by the defense companies...
...The 10 firms employing the largest number had 1,065 on their payrolls, an average of 106 each and triple the average number they had employed a decade earlier...
...Between the end of World War II and 1969, a total of 1 trillion dollars was spent on the military—a major part during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations...
...Whirlpool and General Motors are engaged in the projectile business...
...THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX today commands power far beyond the measure it knew when President Eisenhower warned in his Farewell Address of 1961 against its "unwarranted influence...
...Almost invariably, they work separately, with a minimum of allies, in each community...
...On the one hand, the defense firms possess skills, equipment, and land which would be invaluable to life-serving programs...
...What are the vital interests of the United States...
...The power of the complex explains much, but not all, of the federal government's policies...
...Later, Hyman Bookbinder, a former official of the Office of Employment Opportunity, estimated that it would require $50 billion a year for 20 years to implement the Commission's recommendations...
...This massive investment not only purchased the most destructive military machine 'From Sen...
...The results are seen most starkly in the field of health...
...The decade of aid was worth $147 million to the Ethiopian government, in return for permission to construct a large electronics STATE WITHIN A STATE eavesdropping base at Kagnew Station, Asmara...
...The trillion-dollar investment in the military has deprived the public of both material and human resources...
...An independent monthly magazine presenting fact and opinion on progress toward a world of peace with justice...
...U Thant Up to date coverage of the world's crisis areas as well as the long term problems of achieving peace...
...James Avery Joyce reports on "The Population Bomb: Can the U.N...
...SANFORD GOTTLIEB was the $90,000-a-year president of the Aerospace Corporation, an offshoot of the Air Force.7 The public has no means of knowing the true size of defense profits...
...Their success will depend on the forging of an urban-suburban coalition of common interests and an awareness that the tax dollars they seek now go to the military...
...It was not until October 1970, for example, that the American public learned that the United States had entered into an unpublicized agreement in 1960 to support a 40,000-man Ethiopian army and to oppose any threats to the territorial integrity of Ethiopia...
...After all, he can see that over 2,000 of his fellow officers work for the big companies...
...Many had been employees of defense industries and the Pentagon, as well as members of the armed services...
...Local leadership of an exceptional quality will be needed before the conservationists SANFORD GOTTLIEB agree to support higher pay for teachers in return for the Education Association's support for a sewage-treatment plant, and before the ghetto leadership agrees to support higher municipal salaries in return for support by the municipal employees of low-cost housing measures...
...Part bureaucratic, part industrial, the complex is a network in which even the closest observers fail to detect where government ends and the corporation begins...
...But until the 1950s and 1960s there never was such an interlocking directorate as presides today over a key juncture of the public and private sectors of the economy...
...Military conscription, approved by the narrowest of margins in 1940, was considered a permanent institution by most Americans only a generation later...
...They were ready to seek the funds for their favorite domestic programs in the swollen military budget...
...There have been many valiant ad hoc skirmishes, but there has not yet been a protracted political war...
...How hard a bargain does he drive with them when he is one or two years away from retirement...
...In fact, the threat of conflict and violence is, if anything, increasing...
...The executive branch achieved its figures of 41 percent for human resources, Hatfield explained, by including under this category the expenditures for such trust funds as social security and railroad retirement (which Congress, as a caretaker, is in no position to touch), all payments for veterans benefits, and even the costs of operating the Selective Service System...
...Built on earlier efforts at coordination by voluntary organizations, the Coalition mobilized religious, peace, labor, scientific, and social-action groups in the fight against ABM and mindless military spending...
...The same survey reported greater generosity toward state proposals to build highways and antipollution and recreational facilities...
...The contracts provided for 8 percent profits as a percentage of costs...
...10003 U.S.A...
...Overkill entered our vocabulary...
...In the previous year, 2 million workers had been added to the ranks of the jobless...
...These premises, in turn, had their source in a confluence of conditions dating from 1942-47: the successful wartime collaboration between American industry and the 8 Published in full in Melman, Pentagon Capitalism, op...
...The Nixon administration failed to plan adequately to cushion the effects of defense cutbacks on these individuals and their communities...
...The economy, too, was altered by the addition of an ingredient that accelerated the militarization of American society and foreign policy...
...Then, after estimating that the United States is "from two to four years ahead of the Soviet Union in every important area of weapons technology," Packard defined his fears for the future: If we ever lose the lead we now have in all major areas of military technology, we will inevitably face the prospect of having to accept a Sputnik not just in one or two unimportant areas now and then, but the prospect of a Sputnik in every important area of military weapons, in strategic nuclear forces, in naval forces, and in conventional ground forces...
...now it produces herbicides and nose assemblies for bombs...
...As voters and taxpayers demand that the federal government press these firms to prepare themselves for civilian life, a chink is opened in the armor of the military-industrial complex...
...3) conversion of military production and facilities to civilian uses...
...The government has a consistent record of extricating them from difficulties...
...Since general-purpose forces (infantry divisions and the nonnuclear navy and aircraft) consume two-thirds of the military dollar, the Nixon administration intends to cut back troops and bases overseas...
...Indeed, sufficiently large cuts in military spending could lead both to tax reductions and increased spending on civilian programs...
...When added to the fact that 49 percent of those polled by Gallup in 1970 favored cuts in military spending," it would appear that in the future the impulse to cut taxes can move in a variety of directions...
...The big defense managements, however, would rather fight than switch...
...The mere cost of the weapons systems approved by the end of 1970 (not including the B-1, ULMS and AWACS) would amount to a minimum of $22 billion—plus $25 billion to buy and operate the F-14 Navy fighter intercepter for a 10-year period...
...The shortage of available brainpower is probably more devastating to American society than even the lack of material resources...
...Moreover, when a contractor is paid for a cost overrun, he may use the money for a variety of purposes (including more luxurious offices or bigger expense accounts), although these payments are not called profits...
...It required the cumulative effect of the Vietnam war on top of cold-war expenditures to teach the lesson that finally this country cannot have both guns and butter—at least, not without wageandprice controls and still higher taxes...
...They breathed noxious fumes in the urban areas although no chemical warfare attack had been launched...
...late the product and how high the cost, [defense contractors] know nothing will happen to them...
...One can hardly deny that forces of subversion and revolution inside the boundaries of many free world countries are expanding at an alarming rate, not only in traditionally troubled areas like the Middle East, but even right here at home in the United States, in Canada, and in South America...
Vol. 18 • October 1971 • No. 5
