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I know, I read the whole thing. 
But what part of this is supposed to contradict what I'm saying? To be worried about the state of the defense industry is to be worried about our national security.
Heck, when you say things like "the defense industry and its collusion with government," you're almost agreeing with me! This is exactly what I'm saying he's saying. He is definitely concerned about the revolving door and the favor-trading that goes on between the two. But he's worried about it as a military man who sees politics trumping sound military policy. He's not worried about the military, he's worried about what government can do to it. This is why he speaks so disparagingly about how "Federal employment" may come to dominate the nation's scholars. This is why this quote...
"Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity."
...is so salient. You're absolutely right that he worries about the relationship between defense and government. But he's worried about what government will do to defense, and not the other way around. This is why he makes several references to the way the political process snuffs out innovation, and no reference to wars for profit or, as far as I can see, any explicit references to the military becoming far too large. To the contrary, he trumpets the size and strength of the military and says it must always be "mighty."
At one point you even specifically quote the line "permanent armaments industry of vast proportions" in order to make your point, but the context of that line is that he says we've been "compelled" to do so. He's not saying it in a negative fashion, so it can't be cited for the conclusion you make in the rest of the sentence.
But what part of this is supposed to contradict what I'm saying? To be worried about the state of the defense industry is to be worried about our national security.Heck, when you say things like "the defense industry and its collusion with government," you're almost agreeing with me! This is exactly what I'm saying he's saying. He is definitely concerned about the revolving door and the favor-trading that goes on between the two. But he's worried about it as a military man who sees politics trumping sound military policy. He's not worried about the military, he's worried about what government can do to it. This is why he speaks so disparagingly about how "Federal employment" may come to dominate the nation's scholars. This is why this quote...
"Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity."
...is so salient. You're absolutely right that he worries about the relationship between defense and government. But he's worried about what government will do to defense, and not the other way around. This is why he makes several references to the way the political process snuffs out innovation, and no reference to wars for profit or, as far as I can see, any explicit references to the military becoming far too large. To the contrary, he trumpets the size and strength of the military and says it must always be "mighty."
At one point you even specifically quote the line "permanent armaments industry of vast proportions" in order to make your point, but the context of that line is that he says we've been "compelled" to do so. He's not saying it in a negative fashion, so it can't be cited for the conclusion you make in the rest of the sentence.
Eisenhower concludes his address by warning that the conference table of peace, "though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield." Transparently, he is worried that the "military-industrial complex," if left unchecked, could thwart diplomacy and promote war instead. And as I showed with the broader quotation in my previous post, Eisenhower is referring not to the defense establishment's "intellectual curiosity," but to that of America's universities and their scholars. He fears that instead of conducting independent research and formulating independent ideas that are consonant with and beneficial to a free society, scholars and scientists will become tools of the private-public defense nexus. Eisenhower is taking the side of neither private industry nor public institutions (i.e. "the government," which includes the defense establishment) in this area. Rather, he is deploring the potential repercussions of their intertwining, the "revolving door" that you correctly noted. He laments that this "revolving door" fosters a behemoth that harms academic scholarship, society's non-defense prerogatives, public policy, and international diplomacy.
Eisenhower constituted a military man, to be sure, but the defense establishment that he is describing proved vaster than just the military proper. The Department of Defense (the Pentagon) had not existed until after World War II and even during that conflict, he fretted over what he later labeled (in the 1961 speech) "a scientific-technological elite." Although his voice proved rather irrelevant since he was involved in the European theater as opposed to the Pacific, Eisenhower in 1945 opposed the prospective droppings of the atomic bombs on Japan, sharing his "grave misgivings" with Secretary of War Henry Stimson because he felt that such detonations would be "completely unnecessary." [See Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953-1956: The White House Years (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 312-13.] In a way, those sentiments foreshadowed his critique of the "military-industrial complex" a decade-and-a-half later.
Last edited by Warren'sShampoo; 08-25-11 at 10:41 PM.
