A look at the modern military industrial complex

Insight

The U.S. spends more on its military than the next eight countries with the highest military budgets behind it on the list, combined. That includes China.
CCTV’s Jim Spellman filed this report from Washington.

U-S President Dwight Eisenhower left office in 1960 with a warning. “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.” Eisenhower said.

55 years later, US defense and related spending eats up about 19% of the U-S budget, rivaling mandatory US spending on the Social Security retirement plan and health care programs.

Recent wars and the ongoing battle against terrorism led to a spike in spending.

“So America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us. We have to be mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.'” U.S. President Barack Obama said.

Spending has fallen as major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were brought to a halt, but the fight against terrorist groups like ISIL continues, and the “Military Industrial Complex” that Eisenhower warned of has grown beyond the tanks and aircraft of traditional war.

As the military industrial complex has grown it has become about much more than national security and with 1.4 million active duty service members, 700 thousand civilian employees and another 1.1 million reservists the US military is the country’s biggest employer.

Thousands more work for the CIA, NSA, DHS and other agencies, and all those organizations buy stuff like uniforms, weapons, vehicles pumping money into local economies around the U-S and making it politically difficult to reign them in.

Programs that may make war easier to wage and peace difficult to attain.


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