January 17th will be the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the nation in which he warned of the unwarranted and unprecedented influence of the military-industrial complex. I think he would be shocked to see how this influence has grown over the past half century and what this has meant in terms of the country’s immense military budgets, the nuclear arms race, the permanent war footing, the failure to achieve meaningful disarmament, and the illegal wars the US has initiated. In addition to all of this, there is the influence of the military-industrial complex on the media, academia, the Congress and the citizenry. It has also ensnared US allies, like the UK, in its net. The only way to assure that the military-industrial complex can be meshed “with our peaceful methods and goals,” Eisenhower said, is through “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.”
