Looking at President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning on the military-industrial complex 50 years later. In his farewell address, Eisenhower warned of ‘the acquisition of undue influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.’ Now in 2011, the military budget is at its highest levels since World War II, and vast support industries (from aircraft manufacturers to employers of soldiers for hire) are being enriched by record levels of Pentagon contracts. Eisenhower sounded the alarm and periodically others echo it, but the power of military-related activities in the U.S. economy and government continues to grow apace. Join William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative, New America Foundation; and journalists Nathan Hodge, author of Armed Humanitarians and a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal; James Ledbetter, author of Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex; and Sharon Weinberger for a panel discussion marking the release of Hartung's new book, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Bio
William Hartung
Director of the Project on the Control of the International Arms Trade at the World Policy Institute; Research associate and project director at the New York-based Council on Economic Priorities; speech writer and policy analyst for New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams.
He has appeared as a guest on national television and radio programs including CBS' 60 Minutes, the NBC Nightly News, the MacNeill/Lehrer Report, CNN's Inside Business and National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation.
Nathan Hodge
Author of Armed Humanitarians, and a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
James Ledbetter
Op-ed Editor of Reuters, and Author of Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Sharon Weinberger
Sharon Weinberger is the editor-in-chief of Defense Technology International, a bimonthly editorial supplement to Aviation Week & Space Technology. Her writing on science and technology has also appeared in Slate and the Washington Post Magazine. Her book Imaginary Weapons originated as a series of articles she wrote for the Washington Post.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1952.Fabian Bachrach(born Oct. 14, 1890, Denison, Texas, U.S.died March 28, 1969, Washington, D.C.) 34th president of the U.S. (195361). He graduated from West Point (1915), then served in the Panama Canal Zone (192224) and in the Philippines under Douglas MacArthur (193539). In World War II Gen. George Marshall appointed him to the army's war-plans division (1941), then chose him to command U.S. forces in Europe (1942). After planning the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, he was appointed supreme commander of Allied forces (1943). He planned the Normandy Campaign (1944) and the conduct of the war in Europe until the German surrender (1945). He was promoted to five-star general (1944) and was named army chief of staff in 1945. He served as president of Columbia University from 1948 until being appointed supreme commander of NATO in 1951. Both Democrats and Republicans courted Eisenhower as a presidential candidate; in 1952, as the Republican candidate, he defeated Adlai Stevenson with the largest popular vote to that time. He defeated Stevenson again in 1956 in an even larger landslide. His policy of support for Middle Eastern countries facing communist aggression, enunciated in the Eisenhower Doctrine, was a continuation of the containment policy adopted by the Harry Truman administration (seeTruman Doctrine). He sent federal troops to Little Rock, Ark., to enforce integration of a city high school (1957). When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I (1957), he was criticized for failing to develop the U.S. space program; he responded by creating NASA (1958). In his last weeks in office the U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Cuba.