The US Election Will be a Win for the Military-Industrial Complex
Image by Phil Hearing.
As I write this, the day prior to the presidential election, I already know one certain outcome. Whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump claims victory, one winner is certain: “defense” contractors. With bipartisan backing, spending on arms will continue to grow, fueling the profitability of arms manufacturers and solidifying America’s position as the top arms exporter globally. In the U.S. version of democracy, none of the four pro-peace candidates stand a chance. Jill Stein, one of the alternative candidates is a champion of peace, but she won’t win, because only those with billionaire backers can realistically compete. The U.S. may speak proudly about democracy, but its system heavily favors candidates who align with powerful financial interests — interests deeply intertwined with war.
The military-industrial complex is a term coined by President Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961. Eisenhower spoke of the influence of the arms industry and warned Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence” by it.
Between 2017 and 2020, the U.S. exported $41 billion in weapons, a period that almost entirely coincides with Donald Trump’s presidency. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. was the world’s largest arms exporter during this time. Under President Biden, the trend has continued, with more than $38 billion in arms exports in the first three years of his presidency, not counting 2024. This flow of billions sustains the profitability of America’s weapons industry, which has outpaced the S&P 500 stock performance index. But this isn’t just a steady flow of funds to U.S. war contractors, it’s a surging wave, accelerating year over year. And both Trump and Harris are fully part of this machinery.
Last month, Trump claimed to be pro-peace, but drone warfare increased under his leadership. In 2019, Trump revoked an Obama-era rule that required reporting on civilian deaths from drone strikes. Last month, Trump tweeted that “During my Administration, we had peace in the Middle East.” I was in Yemen in 2017, and I heard the bombs fall. That wasn’t peace. That was war, enabled by American weaponry.
Then there’s Harris, who has simultaneously spoken of a need for peace, while Vice President in the government that continued to authorize massive arms exports to Israel, a nation that has been credibly accused of genocide. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said in March that there were ”reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel was committing genocide.
As I watch with dismay, Eisenhower’s words resonate. His warning about the military-industrial complex, now 63 years old, has only grown more potent. What he feared has become a behemoth, an alliance of power that thrives on instability and sells the illusion of security. I fear that, regardless of the election result, U.S. foreign policy will remain shaped by billions in war profiteering contracts, endless arms exports, and a willingness to look the other way as allies commit atrocities. For a nation that champions the rule of law, it’s unsettling to see America’s laws to restrict arms sales to human rights abusers ignored when profits are at stake.
The U.S. might have fashioned the world’s leading democratic brand, but what is the substance of its reputation? When only candidates with billionaire backing can make it to the finish line, the claim is weak. This shows in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2023, where the U.S. is described as a “flawed democracy” ranking in 29th of 167 nations.
If peace is ever to come, it won’t be through a flawed U.S. democracy influenced by the military-industrial complex. It will come when Americans demand a government that values peace over profit, and human rights over corporate interests.
Dan Lamothe, Missy Ryan and Alex Horton | The Washington Post
Nov 8, 2024
The Pentagon is located in Arlington, Va.
The Pentagon anticipates major upheaval once President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House, amid fears that the once and future commander in chief will follow through on vows to deploy the military domestically against American citizens, demand fealty from key leaders and attempt to remake the nonpartisan institution into one explicitly loyal to him.
The trepidation harks back to Trump’s first term, when he smashed norms and frequently clashed with senior Pentagon leaders - including several of his own political appointees. He has shown no signs of altering course this time around, stating throughout his campaign an intent to use military force against the “enemy from within,” to fire any military officer associated with the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan after he left office in 2021 and to reverse what he and his supporters have denounced as “woke” decisions by the Biden administration that include renaming several Army bases that had honored Confederates.
“The greatest danger the military faces” under a second Trump presidency is a “rapid erosion of its professionalism, which would undermine its status and respect from the American people,” said Richard Kohn, a professor and military historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Mr. Trump does not have a real understanding of civil-military relations, or the importance of a nonpartisan, nonpolitical military.”
‘He will deliver’
A spokeswoman for Trump, Karoline Leavitt, said that with Tuesday’s vote, the American public had given him “a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”
Several senior figures in Trump’s first administration later issued public warnings about his authoritarian impulses. Among them were his former defense secretary Mark T. Esper; retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, his former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and his former White House chief of staff John Kelly, also a retired general. Jim Mattis, the retired general who was Trump’s first defense secretary, said little publicly during the election but castigated Trump in an essay in June 2020, calling him “the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people.”
While in office, each served as a bulwark against Trump’s darkest impulses and subsequently voiced grave concerns that he would violate the Constitution by issuing unlawful orders to the military.
As president, Trump boosted the Pentagon’s budget, pressed U.S. allies to spend more on their own defense and loosened battlefield restrictions imposed by President Barack Obama - moves that were greeted positively within the Defense Department.
Created uproar
But the impulsive, antiestablishment nature of his presidency created uproar, including when he intervened in the criminal cases of U.S. troops convicted of war crimes, sought retribution against retired generals who criticized him and abruptly called for a ban on transgender service members without a plan in place. Such moves often caught Pentagon officials flat-footed and left them scrambling to discern what exactly Trump wanted and whether he would change his mind.
As president, Trump used his personal social media to broadcast major U.S. troop movements overseas, including a withdrawal from northern Syria that caused chaos for partner forces there and personnel reductions in Afghanistan while U.S. officials were simultaneously negotiating a departure with the Taliban. Doing so was seen by commanders as unconventional at best.
Earlier this year, retired Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, who oversaw U.S. forces in Afghanistan, recalled for House investigators scrutinizing the withdrawal how in 2018 he was awakened by a phone call informing him the military had been ordered to prepare to leave “in the middle of the night.” The general responded that doing so was “not feasible.”
The first Trump administration also worked to root out career civil servants who were suspected of undermining the president’s agenda or who spoke out when it appeared his directives were unlawful. A Defense Department official said Wednesday that while most career Pentagon staff and military personnel there seek to avoid politics, some now feel afraid based on their experiences during the hyperpartisan first Trump presidency, when chaotic decision-making and abrupt leadership changes at times made it difficult for them to do their jobs.
“People around here are used to transitions - but a lot of them were around for the Trump administration,” said the official, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
‘Professional transition’
After the race was called Wednesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, himself a retired general who spent more than 40 years in uniform, issued a memo to all personnel saying the Pentagon will carry out a “calm, orderly and professional transition to the incoming Trump administration.”
“As it always has,” Austin wrote, “the U.S. military will stand ready to carry out the policy choices of its next Commander in Chief, and to obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command.” He emphasized, too, that the military must “continue to stand apart from the political arena.”
Asked during a news briefing Thursday to clarify why Austin had specified “lawful” orders, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh declined to engage in what she called “hypotheticals.” She characterized the memo as intended to “clearly communicate” Austin’s expectations that the military remain apolitical.
In July, Austin made an attempt to shield nonpartisan career employees from future political interference. In a memo titled “Integrity and Continuity of the Defense Career Civilian Workforce,” he wrote that such employees must be granted due process and must not be subjected to summary dismissal. It’s not clear what lasting effect, if any, such efforts will have on civilian personnel.
While incoming presidents always choose their own political appointees, the Pentagon’s senior military ranks have long been selected on a rotational basis that stretches across presidential terms. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the top officers in each service all stepped into assignments last year that typically last four years.
Risk political backlash
Trump, as commander in chief, has the authority to remove any of them at will. Such a move could risk political backlash from retired generals and lawmakers from both parties who evaluated and approved those nominations, but doing so also would allow him to appoint someone else he perceives to be more loyal to him and his agenda.
One senior U.S. official familiar with discussions in the Pentagon said there is palpable concern among senior staff that Brown “won’t make it through his full term.” In 2020, Trump selected Brown, an Air Force fighter pilot, to become the first African American to lead a branch of service, but since then the general has faced Republican criticism for supporting the Defense Department’s diversity programs.
A spokesman for Brown declined to comment.
Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force attorney, said her greatest concern for the military is if it is used to suppress dissent in the United States. While service members are required to follow U.S. law, all presidential orders stand to be interpreted by rank-and-file personnel as lawful even if they appear to fall in a gray zone, she said, with the possibility of disciplinary punishment for anyone who defies them.
“They will follow President Trump’s orders, particularly because the president can lawfully order domestic use of the military in a wide variety of situations,” VanLandingham predicted, calling the statutory limits on such force “easily legally surmountable.”
“There is huge risk in disobeying a president’s order, and seemingly little risk in obeying it,” she said.
Peter Feaver, an expert on civil-military relations at Duke University, said that most military personnel and career civil servants are likely to see their mission as serving the new president and enabling him to exercise his powers as commander in chief. He urged the new administration not to sideline or retaliate against them if they make recommendations that run counter to White House desires - something that occurred repeatedly during Trump’s first term.
“Their professional duty is to warn the bosses of unintended consequences of what they’re trying to do,” Feaver said. “That’s not resistance; that’s not disloyalty; that’s literally their job.”
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