9
Eisenhower and the Farewell Address
On January 17, 1961, just three days before leaving office, President Eisenhower addressed the nation for the last time. Now a seventy-year-old man who had devoted his entire adult life to his country, few would have criticized him if he had simply said goodbye and wished the nation well. But those who tuned in to watch the televised speech heard far more than a sentimental leave-taking. Instead, Eisenhower’s last presidential speech would be remembered primarily for its warning about what he called the military-industrial complex:
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.1
Eisenhower’s Farewell Address is the most enduring speech of his presidency, and historians have not tired of analyzing its content and debating the motives behind its warnings. As with other aspects of Eisenhower’s presidency, critical early reviews of the speech gradually gave way to a more positive assessment. As time went by, historian Chester Pach wrote, “Eisenhower looked less like a befuddled or belated statesman and more like a prophet who foresaw vital and enduring issues of contemporary U.S. public policy.”2
One of the most intriguing aspects of the speech is that on its surface, it seems to contradict his eight-year presidency. After all, Eisenhower presided over a peacetime military with a budget that was only slightly smaller than it had been when he took office during the Korean War, and a nuclear stockpile that was exponentially larger. This raises the question of when Eisenhower became concerned about it, and why he waited until his departure to draw attention to it. Historian James Ledbetter asked, “If the threat was as profound as he laid it out—‘economic, political, even spiritual’—why did he wait until he was leaving office to warn the country?” Surveying the literature, he found a variety of answers. One argument is that Eisenhower was a hypocrite—one who publicly advocated views such as those in the Farewell Address to “placate particular audiences and manage the insecurity that arose from his administration’s strategic reliance on nuclear weapons.” An alternative is that Eisenhower was sincere: he genuinely held the views expressed in his farewell address, but over the years he had been “hemmed in” by advisers and members of Congress who did not share them, and by the Soviet Union, whose intransigence prevented him from acting on them. A third possibility is that Eisenhower’s views changed over time. At the beginning of his administration, he accepted the New Look’s reliance on nuclear deterrence, but he became increasingly uncomfortable with it as time went on. Finally, there are those who argue that Eisenhower was not opposed to the existence of a military-industrial complex as long as he—or someone equally capable of controlling it—was in command, but the inexperience of the incoming Kennedy administration caused him to issue the warning.3 Eisenhower, according to this argument, was worried that Kennedy and Johnson, “trapped by their exaggerated claims about missile gaps,” were likely to increase military spending to vindicate their past judgments.4
None of these arguments alone fully explains Eisenhower’s Farewell Address. Eisenhower was sincere in his warning about the military-industrial complex—otherwise he could have left the White House without mentioning it at all—but, as we have seen, he was certainly not “hemmed in” by his advisers. It is also true that Eisenhower’s views on maintaining a massive peacetime military had changed over the years. The change, however, was not a growing unease regarding U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons; he had always considered them a deterrent and repeatedly reminded the JCS that their purpose was to prevent war. What changed was his level of comfort regarding the cost of the U.S. arsenal. “During the years of my presidency, and especially the latter years,” he wrote in Waging Peace, “I began to feel more and more uneasiness about the effect on the nation of tremendous peacetime military expenditures.”5 This was especially true after Sputnik when claims of a missile gap had forced Eisenhower to approve a defense budget that was larger than he believed was necessary. Eisenhower did fear that Kennedy was unprepared to resist the pressures of the military-industrial complex, but he had already felt those pressures himself to an uncomfortable degree.
Eisenhower’s Farewell Address was not an attempt to deny responsibility for the birth of the military-industrial complex. Its creation was the unfortunate but predictable result of the conscious decision he had made to maintain a high, but sustainable, level of military spending due to the unprecedented demands of the Cold War. Nor was it a call for the military-industrial complex to be destroyed, although in later years some would choose to interpret it that way. Rather, it was a warning that future presidents and “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry” should “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence” by the military-industrial complex, lest it lead to “the disastrous rise of misplaced power.” The key to understanding Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, indeed the key to understanding his presidency, is balance. “Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance,” he said in a mostly forgotten part of the speech. “Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.”
Eisenhower’s Farewell Address was not particularly well received in 1961, but it is now considered the most important speech of his presidency. Its warning about the military-industrial complex was accepted as prophesy by those who opposed American involvement in the Vietnam War—a conflict Eisenhower had avoided—and remained popular with critics of military spending throughout the Cold War. More recently, references to the military-industrial complex surged as a result of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Idea for the Speech
Eisenhower was heavily involved in the writing of his speeches. At the end of his second term, his speech writers were Malcolm Moos and Ralph Williams. In a 1988 interview conducted by the Eisenhower Presidential Library, Williams provided insight into the process. Eisenhower liked to receive a full first draft of a speech before he began to think seriously about it. Once the first draft was complete, Williams said, the president would become “intensely involved.” Before the speech was finished, an important speech would go through “ten to fifteen drafts”—each new draft beginning when the speech writers received Eisenhower’s comments on the previous one. According to Williams, the president’s comments were usually sent by messenger; it was unusual for Moos or himself to work directly with Eisenhower.6 In his 1974 memoir, Milton Eisenhower explained the role that he played. “I nearly always rewrote the speech completely, giving it a normal progression in fact and thought and easily using the president’s own phrases which were not different from my own.” Only then, he said, did Eisenhower begin to mark it up. Milton believed that Moos was an “especially effective” speechwriter for his brother and that the help he gave on Moos’s drafts was “fairly easy.”7 Williams explained that “draft by draft, it literally became his very own speech from the beginning to the end.” Eisenhower “would edit—not only the textual and substantive material—but he would fiddle with words.” By the time Eisenhower delivered the speech “it was, in every sense of the word, his speech.” Eisenhower, he reiterated, “was not a man to let anybody put words in his mouth. If he said those words, he meant them.”8
Records at his presidential library make clear that by May 1959, Eisenhower was considering the possibility of a farewell address. At that time, he was thinking of giving the speech to a joint session of Congress. “There would be no profit in expressing, in such a setting, anything that was partisan in character,” he wrote to Milton. “Rather I think the purpose would be to emphasize a few homely truths… . A collateral purpose would be, of course, merely to say an official ‘goodbye.’ ”9 Malcolm Moos recalled that about this same time, the president had said to him, “By the way, Malcolm, I want to have something to say when I leave here, and I want you to be thinking about it… . I’m not interested in capturing headlines, but I want to have a message and I want you to be thinking about it well in advance.”10 What, exactly, that message would be clearly had not been decided, but with his brother Milton and Moos involved it was unlikely to consist of “a few homely truths,” and he must have known he would make headlines no matter what he said.
An inspiration for Eisenhower’s Farewell Address was the one given by George Washington as his presidency was nearing an end. Eisenhower would never have presumed to compare himself to Washington, one of his boyhood heroes, but the similarities are unmistakable. Both men had spent most of their adult lives in the military, had become irrevocably associated with victory in a transformative war, had grudgingly agreed to enter politics, and served two terms as president. Now, like Washington, Eisenhower hoped to give the next generation of leaders the benefit of his experience. Washington’s Farewell Address was certainly on the minds of Moos and Williams as they worked on Eisenhower’s speech.11 One line in particular stands out. Washington urged Americans to “avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”12
On October 31, 1960, Williams wrote to Moos with some ideas for the 1961 State of the Union address. One of those ideas was “the problem of militarism.” Elaborating, Williams wrote that “for the first time in its history, the United States has a permanent war-based industry… . General officers retiring at an early age take positions in [a] war-based industrial complex shaping its decisions and guiding the direction of its tremendous thrust… . We must be very careful to ensure that the ‘merchants of death’ do not come to dictate national policy.”13 Moos was immediately taken by Williams’s suggestion and asked him to develop the idea further. In an interview given to the Columbia Oral History Project in 1972, Moos noted three influences that made him particularly interested in the “war-based industrial complex” Williams had described. First, Eisenhower’s naval attaché Pete Aurand often left copies of his aerospace journals in Moos’s office, and Moos was “astounded” at the number of advertisements placed by companies in defense-related industries. Second, Moos, who had been on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University, had a former graduate student who was studying the growing number of retired military officers who were taking executive positions in the defense industry. And third, as a former academic, Moos was aware of the role that defense dollars played in scientific research undertaken by universities.14 Eventually, Williams changed “war-based” to “military,” believing that “military-industrial complex” more accurately described the situation.15 In November, Moos gave Eisenhower a draft of the speech that included Williams’s idea. The president responded enthusiastically: “I think you’ve got something here.”16
Milton Eisenhower became heavily involved in December. After discussing the speech with his brother throughout the month, on December 30 Milton dictated a new opening to Ann Whitman, the president’s secretary. He then added extensive handwritten comments to her typed draft. This document represents a major turning point in the speech’s evolution. The new opening indicated that Eisenhower’s farewell would not be a speech to Congress but a televised address directly to the American people. According to historian Delores Janiewski, Milton’s “proximity to the president during this crucial phase in late December indicates that he actively participated in the decision.”17 Delivering his Farewell Address from the Oval Office not only changed the speech’s audience, it also freed it from the formal expectations of the constitutionally mandated State of the Union. Eisenhower transmitted his State of the Union address, a summary of his administration’s accomplishments, to Congress in writing on January 12.18
There are only seven drafts of the Farewell Address in the collection at the Eisenhower Presidential Library. Although other documents indicate that work started two months before, the earliest of these is dated January 6. According to Eisenhower’s appointment schedule, he met with Milton and Moos together on that day. The president had two additional meetings with his brother on the sixth and then, on the seventh, Milton wrote extensive handwritten comments on the previous day’s draft.19 The president then met with Moos and Milton again on the tenth, and with his brother alone on the thirteenth. The final draft is dated January 16, the day before Eisenhower delivered it. These meetings suggest that the president and his brother were directly engaged in drafting the speech.20 The seven drafts produced in this short span, however, show a nearly completed speech with only minor changes being made. According to Williams, it was very unusual that so few changes were made in the last seven drafts of such an important speech: “Apparently it was what he wanted to say because he made so few changes to it.” Moos meeting directly with the president was also unusual, according to Williams.21
Crafting the Message
Although some critics considered Eisenhower’s warnings about the growth of the military-industrial complex hypocritical, his concerns were not new. As army chief of staff, Eisenhower had fought the rapid demobilization of the U.S. military that took place following World War II. Believing that American weakness had encouraged communist aggression, Eisenhower refused to repeat that pattern after the end of the Korean War. The result was the largest peacetime military budget in American history. But the New Look was designed to provide sufficient security at a cost that was sustainable over the long term. Doing more, he believed, not only threatened the economic health of the country, it risked the very freedom the United States sought to defend. Soviet leaders wanted to “force upon America and the free world an unbearable security burden leading to an economic disaster,” Eisenhower said in a May 1953 speech. “We live in an age of peril; we must think and plan and provide so as to live through this age in freedom—in ways that do not undermine our freedom even as we strive to defend it.” Above all, the United States must not “imitate the methods of the dictator”; it must not devote itself to the “grim purposes of the garrison state.”22
According to Harold Stassen, in December 1954, Eisenhower made his concerns about the growth of the defense industry and its close ties to the military a central point in a meeting with the secretary of defense and the JCS. At the time the army and navy chiefs were upset because their share of the defense budget had fallen due to the implementation of the New Look; but Eisenhower was determined not to give in to their demands for more. “Our national security will depend as much upon our economic strength as our military strength,” Stassen later recalled the president saying, “and … our military establishment must take on some responsibility for our economic strength.” This was “extremely important,” Eisenhower said, shifting emphasis. “If the military and our industry leaders ever team up, they can dictate the whole country. And they will end up with too much power. And that will be bad… . There’s a real danger of the military ganging up with powerful industrial leaders, and parceling out the contracts for weapons and research and all kinds of products and services. Bigness means lots of money to hand out—and that’s dangerous, dangerous.” He reemphasized these themes when he brought the meeting to a close. “I want you to know where I stand in my general philosophies of military doctrine, how closely it meshes with the economic policies of the country, and how we’ve got to keep the military and industry balanced and apart, so they don’t team up for monopolies—and too much power.”23
Despite the unprecedented size of the military budget, Eisenhower was under constant pressure to spend more. This was particularly true following Sputnik and the release of the Gaither Committee report. Ralph Williams recalled that during this period it was easy to see the military-industrial complex at work. Throughout his presidency, he said, Eisenhower had “suffered the slings and arrows of people who wanted more money for defense,” but the post-Sputnik claims of a missile gap took the onslaught to a new level. The air force “had a tremendous network of help among the aerospace suppliers and the congressional people who benefitted— whose districts benefitted—from these [Defense] contracts.” And because of Eisenhower’s focus on the budget, “Democrats figured they had a live one: here was a miserly president pinching pennies at the expense of the nation’s security.” When it came time to suggest possibilities for the Farewell Address, the military-industrial complex “found a rather ready and willing receiver” in the president. Eisenhower’s “sense of fair play had been outraged,” and “he just wanted to set the record straight… . He could also envision the possibility of this thing getting out of control and inducing the government to do some very dumb and dangerous things at the behest of these people who had so much influence.”24
James Killian, the president’s science adviser, confirmed Eisenhower’s concern during the post-Sputnik period over the influence of the defense industry. “Repeatedly, I saw Ike angered by the excesses, both in text and advertising, of the aerospace-electronics press, which advocated ever bigger and better weapons to meet an ever bigger and better Soviet threat they had conjured up,” Killian wrote. He remembered the president saying, “We must avoid letting the munitions companies dictate the pattern of our organization.”25
The military-industrial complex might have more accurately been termed the military-industrial-congressional complex since all three played an important role in the situation Eisenhower was describing. As Eisenhower explained in his memoir:
The military services are rarely satisfied with the amounts allocated to them… . The makers of the expensive munitions of war, to be sure, like the profits they receive, and the greater the expenditures the more lucrative the profits. Under the spur of profit potential, powerful lobbies spring up to argue for even larger expenditures. And the web of special interest grows. Each community in which a manufacturing plant or a military installation is located profits from the money spent and the jobs created in the area. This fact, of course, constantly presses on the community’s political representatives—congressmen, senators, and others—to maintain the facility at maximum strength. All of these forces … override the convictions of responsible officials.26
One can easily imagine the above paragraph in the Farewell Address itself, rather than in a presidential memoir published more than four years later. If Eisenhower or his speech writers did consider implicating Congress, or Democrats, in the growth of the military-industrial complex, there is no record of it in the existing drafts of the speech. However tempting it might have been to point fingers, doing so would have run counter to the tone that Eisenhower hoped to maintain with his speech. Communications scholar Charles Griffin has written that the president saw his farewell “as an opportunity to emulate the rhetorical precedent of his hero [George Washington] by striking back at his foes without compromising, indeed, while enhancing his stature as a man of principle.”27 Janiewski agrees; the speech did not use ideological labels, she said, because Eisenhower “chose to emphasize maturity and self-control as attributes of the statesman.”28
There are other examples of a self-conscious attempt to soften the language of the speech in regard to the military-industrial complex. Milton Eisenhower’s handwritten comments on December 30 added “an alert, knowledgeable, and dedicated citizenry” to the speech as a balance that could “compel the proper meshing of the huge machinery of our defenses with our peace-oriented economy so that liberty and security may both prosper.” This insertion suggests that, although the military-industrial complex represented a threat, it was one that a healthy democracy could handle. In a later draft, Moos added the words “whether sought or unsought” following the warning to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence” by the military-industrial complex. The change was made to avoid the suggestion that “they were deliberately trying to subvert our liberties.”29
Early in the speech, Eisenhower said that the nation faced many threats, “new in kind or degree,” but he would “mention two only.” The first of these was the military-industrial complex. The second was a “revolution in the conduct of research.” Because of the demands of the Cold War, “a steadily increasing share” of scientific research was being conducted “for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.” Government needs and government grants, he feared, had become “a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” The danger that the nation’s scientists would be dominated by “federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money,” he said, “was ever present.” An “equal and opposite danger” was that public policy could become “the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” It is easy to see that the advertisements in aerospace trade journals, mentioned by Moos and Killian, had an influence on this line of the speech. It was the task of the statesman, Eisenhower said, “to mold, to balance, and to integrate” these forces to fit the needs of a free society.
Forgotten Parts of the Speech
Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex and, to a lesser extent, the scientific-technological elite have been the exclusive focus of scholars who have studied the Farewell Address. They are also the parts of the speech that have remained in our national consciousness. But other aspects of the speech are no less relevant to our times. Some of them were likely overlooked because they seemed so commonplace at the time. Less than a minute into the speech, Eisenhower said: “Like every other citizen, I wish the new president, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.” Despite the fact that John Kennedy, a Democrat, had beaten Richard Nixon, Eisenhower’s vice president, in a very close election, this line was likely written without a moment’s thought or hesitation, and listeners surely forgot it just as quickly. The turmoil following the 2020 presidential election, however, reminds us that the peaceful transfer of power should not be taken for granted.
In the next sentence Eisenhower went on to say, “Our people expect their president and the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation.” His administration and Congress, he said, had “cooperated well,” avoided partisanship, and accomplished a great deal, and for this he offered his gratitude. The origin of these lines goes back to the early planning stages for the Farewell Address. In a May 1959 letter to his brother Milton, Eisenhower said that he was undecided about whether he should give “a so-called ‘farewell’ talk.” The reason he had “been toying with the idea,” he said, was because of his experience “working with a Congress controlled by the opposite political party.” This experience made him eager to share his thoughts about the “responsibilities and duties of a government that must be responsive to the will of majorities, even when the decisions of those majorities create apparent paradoxes.”30 Divided government, which Eisenhower had to contend with for six years, has become more common in the years since his presidency. The extreme partisanship that now accompanies it has made many Americans less hopeful, and some Americans less desirous, that their president and Congress will find “essential agreement” whether or not the questions are of “great moment.”
As a guide to understanding Eisenhower’s presidency, one forgotten aspect of his Farewell Address stands out—his admonition to seek balance. The Sputnik crisis was likely the short-term inspiration for his comments on balance: “Crises there will continue to be,” he said. “In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” Eisenhower mentioned two of the “miraculous” solutions he had fought off in the months following Sputnik—“a huge increase in newer elements of our defense,” and “a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research”—but he was using the line to set up a bigger point.
Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs—balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage—balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
Eisenhower later integrated the management of the military-industrial complex into his theme of balance. “It is the task of statesmanship,” he said, “to mold, to balance, and to integrate” the forces of the military-industrial complex “within the principles of our democratic system.” But this section has wider applicability. Moving on, he incorporated the most fundamental of his beliefs, fiscal responsibility, into his theme by admonishing his listeners to balance their desires for today with their hopes for tomorrow: “We … must avoid the impulse to live for today only, 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.”
Reaction to the Speech
Given the fact that the Farewell Address is now remembered as the most important speech of Eisenhower’s presidency, it may be surprising that immediate reaction to it was not generally positive. The Washington Post reported the speech contained “little that was new.” Le Monde (France) concurred, saying that it was “without originality.” Some who praised the content of the speech did so in a backhanded way. The Nation, a progressive weekly, wrote that “nothing became Mr. Eisenhower’s career in office like the leaving of it… . For eight years, Mr. Eisenhower has depressed his fellow Americans by a seeming inability to grasp the major problems of his era; but now in the closing days of his administration he spoke like the statesman and democratic leader we had so hungered for him to become.”31
The next day, at his final press conference, Eisenhower was asked only one question specifically about his Farewell Address—it concerned the scientific-technological elite. In his response, Eisenhower elaborated on the danger of public policy becoming captive to a scientific-technological elite. “When you see almost every one of your magazines, no matter what they are advertising, has a picture of the Titan missile or the Atlas,” he said, it causes “an insidious penetration of our own minds that the only thing this country is engaged in is in weaponry and missiles… . We just can’t afford to do that. The reason we have them is to protect the great values in which we believe.” It is interesting that Eisenhower chose to elaborate extemporaneously on an aspect of the problem that had not made it into his speech. His comments, while critical of the defense industry, also suggest that its existence was necessary.32 As with military spending, balance was the key.
Two days after Eisenhower left office, Jack Raymond of the New York Times published an analysis of the military-industrial complex. In it he detailed an aspect of the problem that Eisenhower had not specifically mentioned in his speech, but that Williams had included in his first partial draft. After World War II, military men, Eisenhower himself being the best example, had taken positions of leadership in government, universities, and industry. Since then, he said, there had developed a “cross-fertilization of men and ideas” among these institutions. Currently, he said, there were 726 former high-ranking military officers employed by the country’s 100 leading defense contractors. Raymond did not name names, but one example was Admiral Arthur Radford, former chairman of the JCS, who was at this time director of the Philco Corporation. “The basic characteristic of military-industrial relations,” Raymond said, “is their … mutual interest in seeking a large defense establishment, bigger and better weapons and greater national devotion to problems of security.” Referring to the comments Eisenhower had made about aerospace advertising at his press conference the day after his speech, Raymond pointed out that earlier in the month, in the same issue of the Times that had reported on the president’s budget message, there had been “a full-page advertisement of the merits of an airplane for which no new appropriations were being sought.”
Raymond confirmed and elaborated on some of the figures that Eisenhower used in his speech. It was true that the government spent 59 percent of its $80.9 billion budget on national security, he said, adding that the Defense Department controlled $32 billion worth of real estate, affecting local economies throughout the country. The majority of defense contracts were held by only a “handful” of large companies, and the federal government supported more than 60 percent of the nation’s scientific research. Raymond also defended Eisenhower from critics who claimed his warnings were hypocritical. He reminded readers that two years earlier when Eisenhower had been asked if he would spend more on defense if the nation could afford it, the president had answered flatly “I would not,” adding that anyone “with any sense could see that if military spending were not restricted the United States would become a ‘garrison state.’ ”33
Raymond’s analysis of the military-industrial complex was printed on page four of section two of the New York Times. By the time it appeared, the Times had largely forgotten Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, having turned its attention to John Kennedy whose inaugural address with its lofty exhortation to “ask not what your country can do for you” had captured the nation’s imagination. In the years that followed, however, with the country mired in a war in Vietnam—a war that Eisenhower had avoided—the Farewell Address began a new life. It also took on a new meaning. As Ralph Williams—who coined the term “military-industrial complex”—put it, the “subtleties of the original concept … became distorted beyond recognition.”34 When antiwar critics used the term, as they often did, they did so as if its meaning was synonymous with the “permanent war economy,” a far more radical thesis proposed by Columbia sociologist C. Wright Mills in his book The Power Elite, published in 1956.35 Mills argued that political, military, and economic elites, each acting in their own self-interest, worked together to perpetuate war. As we have seen, the words “whether sought or unsought” were inserted into the Farewell Address to avoid any such suggestion. Furthermore, the speech states that “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel” the proper balance between the military and industry “so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Although Eisenhower’s Farewell Address was not particularly well received in 1961, it is well regarded today, particularly his admonition about the military-industrial complex. References to the military-industrial complex surged in the early twenty-first century due to the increase in defense spending triggered by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than half of the increase in military spending since Eisenhower left office occurred during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Many of the factors that have contributed to the perpetuation of the military-industrial complex are the same as those that Eisenhower warned us about, but some new factors have contributed as well.
Eisenhower did not blame Congress for the creation of the military-industrial complex, but as he explained in his memoir, it played an important role. Congress continues to perpetuate our unsustainable level of defense spending. For members of Congress, defense spending is about jobs. Forty-three of the world’s one hundred largest arms manufacturers are headquartered in the United States. With a combined value of $246 billion, they employ millions of Americans, impacting the economy of every state. Interest in their continued success among members of Congress is, therefore, nationwide and bipartisan.36
The “revolving door” between government, the military, and the defense industry, included in an early draft of the farewell address and mentioned in the New York Times analysis of the speech, also remains a problem. According to one report, in 2016, the top twenty U.S. defense contractors hired 645 “former senior government officials, military officers, members of congress, and senior legislative staff as lobbyists, board members, or senior executives.”37 The access that these individuals have to current government officials makes them valuable assets to companies seeking government contracts.
Eisenhower believed that an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” could lessen the negative effects of the military-industrial complex, but the consolidation of American media and its connections to the defense industry and government has made that prospect more difficult. There are currently five conglomerates that control 90 percent of U.S. media. As journalist Helen Johnson has pointed out, these conglomerates are intimately connected to the top defense contractors through interrelated directorships. The resulting “military-industrial-media complex,” she argues, does not make us more alert and knowledgeable. Instead, it influences our perceptions of war in a positive way.38 Embedded journalism, the military oversight of journalists in combat zones that became standard practice during the Iraq War, also has a positive influence on our perception of armed conflict. Finally, corporate media has its own revolving door. Those who shape our opinions of a war are often former military officers or former members of the presidential administration that initiated the conflict.
Eisenhower’s concerns about the development of a scientific-technological elite have also been substantiated. Federal expenditures on the research and development conducted at colleges and universities has increased from about $4 billion in 1960 (after adjusting to 2020 dollars) to more than $46 billion in 2020.39 Research universities that rely on federal funding for their graduate programs in science and technology hire faculty whose research is best suited to compete for this funding, validating Eisenhower’s fear that federal grants would become a substitute for intellectual curiosity. Eisenhower was also concerned that public policy would become captive to a scientific-technological elite. This perception played into many people’s distrust of government health directives during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, like that of his predecessor George Washington, has become part of our national consciousness. It is unfortunate that in both cases we remember their admonitions primarily because of our failure to heed them.