Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower's Final Mission by Bret Baier & Catherine Whitney

Author:Bret Baier & Catherine Whitney [Baier, Bret & Whitney, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062569066
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

And, he might have added, the potential for destruction.

CHAPTER 9

THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

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.

—From Eisenhower’s farewell address

JFK’s false campaign rhetoric, ratcheting up fears that America wasn’t keeping pace with the arms race, had been bad enough. But it was against an insidious backdrop. The war economy was in full flower by the early 1960s, and Ike was disturbed by the ubiquitous display of missiles—missiles!—in advertisements in some of America’s most popular consumer magazines. Full-page ads and double-page spreads were purchased by companies like Goodyear, McDonnell Douglas, General Electric, General Motors, and Boeing. They weren’t only featured in trade publications like Aviation Week, or even Scientific American and the Smithsonian, but also in Life, Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report. What could possibly be the point of advertising to ordinary Americans in this way? Working folks didn’t buy missiles. Housewives didn’t stock up on bombs. But they could be swept up in the drumbeat of a war economy—persuaded by muscular images wrapped in the flag. Thus more, better, and increasingly expensive missiles could be equated with military might and greater patriotism. It was at best a simplistic notion, and at worst a form of profiteering by companies whose incentive was profit, not necessarily patriotism.

In Ike’s view, these advertising campaigns were nothing more than an attempt to make the case for more weaponry directly to the American people so they in turn would place additional pressure on Congress. Science advisor James Killian witnessed Ike’s fury: “Repeatedly I saw Ike angered by the excesses, both in text and advertising, of the aerospace-electronics press, which advocated ever bigger and better weapons to meet an even bigger and better Soviet threat they had conjured up.”

Ike had been agitating on this topic for years. And although one might think it was a distinctly modern concern, brought on by the advances in science and technology, Ike was intrigued to find a similar concern expressed in George Washington’s farewell address. Washington urged the young nation to “avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”

Balance was the theme, both for Washington and Eisenhower. Although Ike’s administration undeniably orchestrated the buildup of a massive nuclear arsenal, he was very interested in having a conversation with the American people about how to achieve balance between military strength and domestic needs. He didn’t want America to be a nation only concerned with its firepower. He thought this new direction should be managed wisely, and he was particularly concerned about the undue influence the military and contractors could have on Congress.

“We don’t want to become a garrison state,” he emphasized at a press conference during his first year in office. “We want to remain free. Our plans and programs have to conform to a free people, which means essentially a free economy.

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