The Rise of the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex

In the 1970s, expenditures on international war research reached upwards of $336 billion. To be clear, this talk of international military research is exclusive to a small number of very wealthy capitalist countries who consider themselves to be the international community, especially the distinct and tyrannical United States.

Military research expenditures have increased exponentially since the presidency of Ronald Reagan and his Star Wars project. It is important to note that the budget for war research was eight times greater than the budget to develop energy for peaceful purposes. That military research spending totaled $30 billion per year before the Reagan era showed the meagerness of research spending in other fields.

It is the industrial and commercial companies that influence governmental and electoral policies in capitalist countries. Therefore military industrial companies, thanks to their strength, play a vital role in policy development and the administration of elections. This role has reached its peak with the ascension of the hawkish neoconservative movement to power in the United States. We have seen how, as soon as they stepped foot into the White House, they started initiating wars all over the world and expanding them in quantity and quality.

However, the war strategy of the neoconservatives soon suffered a heavy setback on the battlefield, particularly in Iraq. What made matters worse was the international financial crisis and that these war-mongering companies were actually benefiting financially while the public suffered financially. It was necessary for the government to provide a bailout to keep American financial institutions afloat. Barack Obama was the presidential candidate for these financial institutions that suffered substantial losses.

President Obama’s administration includes representatives from financial institutions, the same institutions that funded his campaign. Soon, these companies were bailed out of the crisis, which unhinged pillars of American society, as if they had absolutely nothing to do with the crisis. The Obama administration has secured a huge rescue operation that has enabled the financial institutions to come back stronger than they were before the crisis. According to Noam Chomsky, this has laid the foundation for an even bigger financial crisis in the future.

On the other hand, Obama’s administration has succeeded in aiding the industrial military companies to overcome political and moral complexes that resulted from international military setbacks. His administration has also helped to turn the page of this heinous era, by taking these companies out of the spotlight. It is as if the problems of today are strictly new problems with the era of the hawkish neoconservatives behind us. Thanks to Obama and his administration, the American military-industrial complex was able to recover and return to business as usual. This is proven by its resurgence as made evident by the midterm elections, as they are regaining their positions through the tea and coffee parties and the rest of the nonsense led by crazy communities.

Capitalism in (so-called) democratic societies is what okays the nominations of candidates before the campaigns even begin. So what happens after? The voters believe that they are the ones who choose the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, but the choice is actually imposed upon them by the big companies. The actual competition is between the companies and who has the most winning candidates. The capitalist companies are both the winners and losers. Winning does not mean absolute dominance, just as losing does not mean absolute capitulation. The capitalist companies are all parts of the same body: one cannot survive without the other. Therefore, they practice power sharing, as they see themselves as originally being one body, one party — for example, the Democrats and Republicans in the United States and the Labor and Conservative Parties in the United Kingdom.

The American military-industrial complex has overcome its collapse, or predicament, thanks to the Democratic Obama administration. Now the Republicans have recovered their lead with the midterm elections and are able to begin their rise anew, in light of this monopolizing system, which gives them factors for survival and reasons to stay motivated. The differences and contradictions between the two monopolies cannot exceed a certain limit in order not to affect their unity and solidarity. Their differences occur internally. The status quo will remain as long as this system is in place and they are a part of it.