Donald Trump and the Military-Industrial Complex
by Jim Harrold
It has been a busy week for Donald Trump. Remarks attributed to him, in which he calls U.S. military members "suckers" and "losers," dominated the news. There have been denials and affirmations that he did, indeed, say those things. There is a public record of many of the things that Donald Trump has said about people like Senator John McCain. He has a history of making crass and inappropriate comments about others. It is not difficult to believe that he would make such comments about veterans of several wars. However, on Labor Day, Trump tried to explain himself. Once again, a Trump explanation always gives us insight into what he is really thinking, and perhaps provides more insight than he intends.
When Trump says something, we should look at what he said, what he did not say, and what he meant. Trump often latches on to arguments that others have used, but he uses those arguments for his own distinct purposes. In this essay I make the point that what Trump said on Labor Day will be used by his backers to make one argument, but in fact, he is making another argument, an argument that should scare most Americans.
PART I: WHAT TRUMP SAID AND HOW HE AND HIS ADMINISTRATION TRIED TO JUSTIFY IT.
"I'm not saying the military's in love with me -- the soldiers are, the top people in the Pentagon probably aren't because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy..."
Donald Trump is, of course, referencing the famous Eisenhower warning about the "Military-Industrial Complex." That warning has been used by years, particularly by liberals, who have suggested that the only reason we go to war is to enhance the profits of defense contractors, in order to continue to create a reliance on the defense industry. Donald Trump is now being interpreted to mean that he was somehow issuing an equally eloquent warning. He was not. It is not that this view is completely without context or validity. Critics can point to a lot of evidence to suggest that the institutional Department of Defense operates at least in cooperation with the larger defense industry:
1. The United States has been the clear leader in foreign military sales since 1950. Such sales are necessary to support a robust industry, so the defense industry argument goes. It is a common, and not untrue argument, that World War II was won by the Western Allies with their then-ally, the Soviet Union, because of U.S. industrial might. This continued after the war. The U.S. has led all nations in sales of high-value military equipment (SIPRI data at http://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/page/toplist.php).
2. The United States never truly demobilized following World War II. That was a sea-change in American military philosophy. The assumption of the Founders, which can be demonstrated by history, is that wars would be fought, but that once cessation of hostilities occurred, the military force composed of a small professional force supplemented by state militia, would simply go home.
a. In fact, the militia system envisioned by Madison in the Constitution, never really worked, and that resulted in a near catastrophe in the War of 1812 (see Cooper 1997; Resch 1999). The result was that the mixed "small standing army/state militia system" fell apart. In future wars, the United States used a mix of volunteers enticed by decent incentives or an appeal to patriotism, along with conscription, which first was used in the Civil War. However, the original philosophy that "standing armies" were dangerous to liberty remained a tenet of American military thought. Following the Great War, the U.S. military fell to an almost historical low, given the geographic size and population of the United States. What we think of as the successor to the Constitutional militia is the National Guard. The National Guard is really a national force, with a planned structural place in the official force structure, funded mostly out of the budgets for the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force. It is the descendant of the militia, but it looks a lot different than anything Madison would have recognized.
b. Following World War II, the United States found itself in the new and unique position as lone superpower, and the only superpower with atomic, then nuclear, weapons. The Soviet Union, our erstwhile war ally, became our competitor, and the Cold War became greatly exacerbated when the USSR figured out how to make atomic and nuclear weapons. If we only measure the size of the active duty force as one indicator, the size of the U.S. military never dipped below 1.5 million from the end of World War II until the 1990s, after the Soviet Union fell apart.
3. Of course, a standing army needs a more established bureaucracy, so that the increased funding can find a home. There are now very few living Americans who know a time when there was not something called the Department of Defense. However, standing up a Department of Defense was not a given; it was rife with controversy. In fact, as Michael Hogan (1998) argues, it was conservative Republicans who argued most vociferously against a permanent military establishment, put in place by the National Security Act of 1947. Prior to that act, the United States had a separate cabinet level Army and Navy. There was a great fear that forming a single and super Department of Defense could usher in a military coup by a "man on horseback" (see Stuart 2008).
4. President Eisenhower's warning against the military-industrial was clearly informed by his knowledge of American history and his own experience as a career military officer. It was a warning not simply against collaboration between a super Department of Defense and the defense industry, it was a warning against a compliant Congress. At this point of the essay, I want to make clear that I am not necessarily arguing that this complex has evil designs. The fear of an "International Communist Movement" led by the Soviet Union was a real thing. This was a widely held fear shared by members of both political parties, and elected leaders in Congress and the presidents we elected. JFK was as anti-communist as was Richard Nixon. So, it is a bit simplistic, in my view, to assert that this "Military-Industrial Complex" somehow duped Congress and the American People into making sure defense spending continued to at least stay constant, if not grow.
5. Defense spending has grown, or at least stayed constant, given world events. (NOTE: All the data in this paragraph and its sub-paragraphs comes from the DOD FY 2021 Budget Presentation, Table 7-7 at https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2021/FY21_Green_Book.pdf). Donald Trump came to office saying that the military was somehow "broken." This is an utter falsehood. Defense spending is sensitive to world events. The Founders knew that would be the case. The Constitution says in Article I, Section 8, Clause 12, that military spending is limited to two-year appropriations specifically because there was a desire on the part of the writers of the Constitution for Congress to deliberate whether and to what levels the military should be funded (more on that in a moment). Back to the point: as a percentage of GDP, military spending worldwide has generally decreased over decades. In the United States, we can clearly see the sensitivity of defense spending to what else is going on in the world:
a. The post-World War II era of the "Cold War" was a period of increased military spending. In 1940, the last full year prior to American entry into WWII, total national defense spending amounted to 1.7 percent of GDP. In the three peak years of the war (1943, 1944, and 1945), such spending stood at 36.1, 37.0, and 36.6 percent, respectively. Because the Truman administration advocated for reduced military spending after the war ended, this percentage of GDP spending decreased to 3.5 by 1948.
b. Controlling for war periods, here is what we can learn. The average national security spending percentage of GDP during the Korean War years, and its aftermath (1950 to 1955) was at 10.3 percent. During the Vietnam years (1959 to 1974) the percentage was 7.4 percent. From 1975 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the average percent of GDP for national security spending was 5.4 percent.
c. From 1990 until the start of the 2000s, there was wide bipartisan consensus that some kind of "peace dividend" would occur, and defense spending was reduced. From 1990 through 2001 (the fiscal year was ending just as 9/11 happened), national defense spending averaged 3.7 percent.
d. The average percent from 2002 through 2019 is 3.8 percent. The average during the Bush administration (2001 through 2008) was 3.7 percent. During the Obama administration (2009 through 2016) the average was 4.0 percent. For the Trump administration (2017 through 2020), the average was 3.2 percent.
6. The point of the above discussion is that spending does respond to events. The Cold War lasted from around 1946, when Winston Churchill gave his "Iron Curtain" speech, or 1947, when George Kennan wrote his "Mr. X" article in Foreign Affairs. As a percent of GDP, the United States spent what Congress and successive presidents believed was necessary to counter the perceived Soviet threat. In the 1990s, the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations agreed with a bipartisan consensus in Congress that the Cold War was over, and defense spending could decrease. Post-9/11, first the Bush, then the Obama administrations increased spending in response to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Spending did decrease when most American combat troops were withdrawn from Iraq. However, the Trump assertion that Obama somehow bankrupted the Department of Defense is simply not factual.
7. Now, can we assert that Cold War spending and post-9/11 spending was somehow at the behest of a "Military-Industrial State?" It would be hard to deny that both civilian and military leaders within the DOD have usually advocated for increased spending in the name of readiness. In fact, a look at Congressional testimony in the late 1990s shows that even before 9/11, these officials were starting to argue that the post-Cold War cuts went too far. Way back in 1971, William Niskanen argued that heads of all federal bureaucracies used "information asymmetry" to get their desired budgets through Congress. That is, these professional government managers knew far more about running their departments than did any member of Congress, and Congress was often left at the mercy of this expert knowledge. We can argue that DOD bureaucrats are a lot like other bureaucrats. We can also argue that most members of Congress, no matter their party affiliation, probably have developed some baseline level below which they do not want defense spending to fall. If there is a "Military-Industrial Complex," Congress is part of it.
8. Unfortunately, what Donald Trump said on Labor Day implicitly references all this history in a manner that is out of context. He was not making a grand Eisenhower-like pronouncement on the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex. Rather, his statement sounded a lot like he was criticizing the current leadership in the Pentagon. It sounded a lot like him saying "the Soldiers love me, even if the legally-appointed leaders of those Soldiers hate me." It sounded a lot like a man encouraging “the troops” to distrust their leaders. It really did not take long for the administration to try to explain what the President meant. On Tuesday, September 8th, Mark Meadows, the President's Chief of Staff said that Trump's remarks were not a criticism of current DOD leadership, but rather, “That comment was more directed about the military industrial complex.” Meadows made this statement because he is surely aware that a President inciting mutiny among the troops sets a dangerous precedent. However, it is an odd thing to say since the President himself is the one who has bragged that his administration has spent 2.5 trillion dollars on new military hardware. The claim is false, because what Trump is talking about is the total DOD budget for his years in office. The total DOD budget also pays civilian and military personnel, it sets aside money for the retirement of such personnel, it pays for healthcare, and it pays for basing and for operations and maintenance. However, the President has implied on numerous occasions that the entire budget went to pay for new equipment. Making that claim makes it sound like he is a big backer of the defense industry, even if he is doling out a heck of a lot less for new equipment than he brags about.
PART II: WHAT TRUMP REALLY MEANT AND WHY IT IS SO INSIDIOUS.
1. The Trump statement that decried the leadership of the DOD, while somehow supporting the rank and file, is part of a pattern. This President has been making these kinds of statements for his entire presidency. He has been trying to undermine the professionalism and the commitment of career government leaders since 2017. Here is a 2019 Tweet by Donald Trump, after Christopher Wray, the Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, testified before Congress that an Inspector General investigation on FBI activities during 2016 had been properly conducted: (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-attacks-fbi-director-defends-report-finding-anti/story?id=67622299)
"I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me. With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!"
Here is Trump in 2019, "thanking" intelligence community members for their part in the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (from https://www.npr.org/2019/10/29/773127809/how-the-relationship-between-trump-and-his-spy-chiefs-soured):
"And it's really a deserving name, intelligence. I have dealt with some people that aren't very intelligent, having to do with intel."
Here is Trump, earlier in his administration, in 2017, discussing why it had taken so long to appoint permanent ambassadors to other nations https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/03/561797675/im-the-only-one-that-matters-trump-says-of-state-dept-job-vacancies):
"Let me tell you, the one that matters is me," "So, we don't need all the people that they want. You know, don't forget, I'm a businessperson. I tell my people, 'Where you don't need to fill slots, don't fill them.' But we have some people that I'm not happy with their thinking process."
In 2020, Donald Trump called Lt Col Alexander Vindman "insubordinate." That was false. Vindman answered a Congressional subpoena and testified. By Trump's own admission (on his famous 'transcript,') he called the American Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovonovitch, "bad news." The phone call was with the President of Ukraine--to a foreign leaders, he was belittling his own Ambassador.
The list of former administration officials and the names they have been called after leaving the Trump administration is well-known:
Omarosa Manigault Newman, a contestant on "The Apprentice" series, was hired by Trump for his White House staff. When she was fired by then Chief of Staff John Kelly, Trump called Newman, on Twitter in 2018, a "crazed lowlife" and a "dog."
In 2018, on Twitter, he called fired FBI Director James Comey an "untruthful slime ball."
In 2019, he called Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who found out he was fired on Twitter, while on a foreign trip in 2018, "dumb as a rock."
In 2019, Trump called James Mattis, who resigned from the position of Secretary of Defense, "the world's most overrated general."
In 2020, Trump said his former Chief of Staff, John Kelly, "was not in my inner circle and ....slinked away into obscurity."
In 2020, Trump said former National Security Advisor John Bolton “a jerk.”
2. So what? Trump likes to call people names. If you have followed his public life, even casually, you know that is who he is. But here is the problem. The presidency is not a Trump business, even if he wants to treat it like one. The presidency means being head of state of the United States. What is clear is that Donald Trump demands loyalty to his personhood, and he demands little else. His mishandling of the Coronavirus provides us overwhelming evidence of this. He has lambasted governors who have tried to act on best information, all while providing little information himself. He has undermined professional health officials in his own administration. He has questioned what scientists say about vaccinations, proposing his own wild junk science cures.
3. So, what does this have to do with Trump’s Labor Day remarks about DOD leadership? Only this: Donald Trump continues to undermine professionals in government, because he believes in a weird throwback “Spoils System,” where the only people who should be in any office in the federal government are loyalists. That includes scientists, intelligence professionals, law enforcement personnel, military members, and the list goes on. Trump’s ham-handed attempts to change how the 2020 Census is conducted shows that he really does not care about the mission of various government agencies, and he really does not care about their professionalism. What he cares about is that all government agencies respond only to his whims.
4. The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 defined the role of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That appointee is to provide the president with the best military advice. What that implies is that the President will not always like that advice. Congress surely knew that. What Congress also knew at the time of writing that law was that most Presidents would have at least the semblance of an administration where all points of view were considered. What Congress probably did not anticipate was an administration where the word of one man was law. Further, both the Republicans and the Democrats of 1986 certainly would not approve of the Republican Party of 2017 through 2020 simply going along with that kind of behavior from a presidential administration.
5. What would the Founders do? The Constitution, as written, was imperfect. However, one genius aspect of the document is its clear understanding of the corrupting nature of power. That is why separation of powers between branches was, and is, important. We have been ignoring the clause of the Constitution that says military spending should be limited to two years for decades now. That clause has never been repealed, we just stopped paying attention to it. It seems quaint, and perhaps it is. But what we should pay attention to is the spirit in which that clause was written. Alexander Hamilton, if Federalist #26, said this:
The legislature of the United States shall be obliged, [emphasis in original] by this provision, once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot; to come to a new resolution on that point; and to declare their sense of the matter, by a formal vote in the face of their constituents. The are not at liberty [emphasis in original] to vest in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.
6. In the modern era, we overuse the term “Commander-in-Chief,” a term that appears one time in the Constitution. The President is the commander in chief, but that was never the main job the Founders believed that any president would have. Our overuse of the term, in the media, in our public discourse, and by elected officials, provides a deference to the President vis-à-vis Congress. As long as we have presidents who understand our own history and traditions, perhaps this deference is not dangerous. However, we now have a President in Donald Trump who seems neither to understand nor care about such history and traditions. And it is dangerous.
References
Cooper, J. (1997). The Rise of the National Guard: The Evolution of the American Militia: 1865- 1920. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Department of Defense, National Defense Estimates for FY 2021 (DOD Green Book). Undersecretary of Defense, Comptroller at https://comptroller.defense.gov/Budget-Materials/Budget2021/.
Hogan, M. (1998). A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Niskanen, W.A. (1971). Bureaucracy and Representative Government. New York: Routledge
Resch, J. P. (1999). Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment, and Political Culture in the Early Republic. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute at https://www.sipri.org/.
Stuart, D. T. (2008). Creating the National Security State: A History of the Law that Transformed America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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