On January 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower’s political farewell to the American people, televised from the Oval Office, made a sharp point of departure in its content. The revered military leader and World War II war hero didn’t ruminate on the “Old Soldier” nostalgia as expected. However, his final address contained grave warnings on the emergence of a “military-industry complex,” the phrase he famously coined during his speech. He cautioned that the blending of business and war and Congressional patronage posed enormous danger to the American people and the world.
In the following decades, the “military-industry-congressional” complex has explicitly transformed the world into a war machine. The political discourse in the US was deftly manipulated; the threat of an “evil empire” — the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism — triggered the Cold War and accelerated a nuclear arms race. The Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world closer to a nuclear flashpoint between the US and the Soviet Union. Though a civilizational catastrophe was averted, Eisenhower’s apprehensions came to pass. The Cold War entrenched the omnipotence of the defence corporations. Through their unholy nexus with the political establishment, they manufactured consent among the American public for global military superiority. The psyche of peace was effectively supplanted with the business of “threat-creation.”
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