Was President Ike Really Opposed to the Warfare State?

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former commander of all Allied forces during the Second World War, is perhaps remembered mostly for his following words of wisdom:

 

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

 

 

As President Ike saw it, the Cold War spawned the first ever large-scale peacetime military establishment in American history. But was he a true opponent of this development in the history of our republic? The truth is that while the previous statement contains truth, it did not reflect his actions and policy making during his administration. In reality, Ike's administration helped to further entrench the military industrial complex and the warfare state in American psyche and life.

 

 

Prior to Eisenhower's administration, the administration of Harry Truman and brought the United States into an unnecessary war in Korea in an attempt to prevent the American friendly government of the south from being taken over by the Communist north. The Truman administration also began the process of creating a permanent peacetime military establishment by increasing military spending drastically and getting the United States involved in NATO and the Marshall Plan. President Truman basically saw and aided the genesis of a global political and military empire for America.

 

 

It was this development that led to the Soviet Union being branded as the new Hitler of that time, hell-bent on world conquest. President Eisenhower responded to this like most presidents since Truman have responded: with interventionism and militarism abroad and an ugly form of military socialism at home. Eisenhower believed that peace could be achieved by "our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction." While it is true that a strong national defense is necessary to defending our country, the military build-up of the Cold War period was not for purposes of national defense and was indeed unnecessary to defending this country. Rather, this military build-up was postured toward maintaining a global American empire.

 

Eisenhower also argued for the Cold War in his Farewell Address, describing the conflict as commanding "our whole attention, absorb[ing] our very beings. We face a hostile ideology – global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method." No longer was the U.S. limited to providing a national defense to protect the lives and liberty of the American people, but rather the U.S. was to adopt a foreign policy which would "keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations."

 

As Lew Rockwell has noted, "Because some crusty apparatchiks are imposing every manner of economic control over Russia and a few satellites, US foreign policy must absorb the whole of our beings? So much for limited government."

 

Rockwell also notes the following: "As a percent of total budget outlays, military spending went from 30 percent in 1950 to 70 percent in 1957. This was the largest peacetime buildup in American history. During a dramatic economic expansion, the president worked to maintain a high military-spending level as a percentage of the rising GDP — establishing the modern precedent that military socialism is integral to the economic life of the country. Spending rose in absolute terms every year he was president, from $358 billion in 1952 to $585 billion in the last budget for which he bore responsibility in 1962, a whopping 63.4 percent increase during the Eisenhower years."

 

A program of nuclear attack drills in public schools all across the country permeated and influenced an entire generation of Americans to believe irrational fears at face value while an unconstitutional Interstate Highway system was created to facilitate the quicker movement of military troops across the country. But perhaps one of the worst legacies of the Eisenhower administration was his willingness to have the U.S. (through the CIA) participate in overthrow of the Iranian government of Muhammad Mossadeq in 1953, also known as Operation Ajax. This single event would lead to future blowback in the region of the world to this very day.

 

If anything, Eisenhower helped to foster an un-American program of imperialism, militarism, and socialism on a gullible American people. Eisenhower was not a principled opponent of the warfare state; he was an instrument in the warfare state's growth over our free society.