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( Military-industrial complex)
A military-industrial complex (MIC) is composed of a nation's armed forces, its suppliers of weapons systems, supplies and services, and its civil government. The term "MIC" is most often used in reference to the United States, where it gained popularity after its use in the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, though the term is applicable to any country with a similarly developed infrastructure. It is sometimes used more broadly to include the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as institutions of the defense contractors, The Pentagon, and the Congress and Executive branch. This sector is intrinsically prone to principal-agent problem, moral hazard, and rent seeking. Cases of political corruption have also surfaced with regularity. A similar thesis was originally expressed by Daniel Guérin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government support to heavy industry. According to historian William H. McNeill, the first modern MICs arose in Britain and France in the 1880s and 1890s. The naval rivalry between these two powers was of utmost significance in the fermentation, growth and development of these MICs. Conversely, the existence of these two nations' respective MICs may have been the source of these military tensions. Officers like Admiral Jackie Fisher influenced the shift toward faster technological integration (which meant closer relationships with private, innovative companies). Similar MICs soon followed in nations like Germany, Japan, and the United States. Industrialists who played a part in the arms industry of this era included Alfred Krupp, Samuel Colt, William G. Armstrong, Alfred Nobel, and Joseph Whitworth.
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