Using their various mechanisms of influence, the military-industrial complexes, have always played a prominent role in United States foreign policy driving it towards interventionism in various regions and countries. There have been numerous examples of the role and influence of military-industrial complexes in the United States interventionist foreign policy since the United States government entered the Second World War following the interests of these complexes.
Some of these instances are as follows:
The Entry of the United States into World War II
The attack on Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service on December 7, 1941, directly led to the United States’ entry into World War II. There are many speculations about this incident. Despite the exposure of the radio communications and the awareness that Japanese forces are within 400 miles of Pearl Harbor, no action was taken to prevent them from attacking, and even General Marshall, the Commander-in-Chief, only warned Hawaii some hours before the incident. But what caused the headquarters and the president, who despite knowing about the presence of the enemy and the possibility of an impending attack, to show no reaction. There were two forces at the time that demanded United States entry into the war. One was the Council on Foreign Relations, which consisted of capitalist figures, bankers and industrialists (military-defence) and the other was the military-industrial complexes that were not allowed to sell weapons abroad due to the Neutrality Act.
In such a situation, the complexes achieved their goals by influencing the Council on Foreign Relations. On the other hand, the Council, in pursuit of governing the world and expanding capitalism, was eager for the United States’ engagement in the war.
Some of the members of the Council on Foreign Relations at the same time were a member of Roosevelt’s cabinet such as the Secretary of State Edward Reilly Stettinius, Deputy Secretary of State Sumner Waltz and the Secretary of War Henry Stimson. The influence of the Council on foreign policy was such that 40 members of the American delegation to the San Francisco Conference were members of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Korean War
The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, following the clashes between the proponents of the United States and the Soviet Union. The effects of the war on United States prestige were more of a concern than the danger of the enemy’s attacks.
Given the influence of the military and the Pentagon on the Truman administration, the Washington Post wrote in April 1951: “The foreign policy of Acheson regime is merely a copy of the Pentagon’s strategy that ignores the principles. The military and their agents outline our foreign policy, not the diplomats.”
Nearly 540,000 United States troops were involved in the war that was lasted for three years and cost $686 billion and led to the expansion and increasing of the military-industrial complexes and prevented them from going bankrupt. In fact, the Korean War was influenced by the National Security Council Report No. 68 and the military-industrial complexes were pursuing their goals in the war through the Pentagon and the State Department.
The Vietnam War
To study the history of communism in Vietnam, one should take the Vietnam War and the United States’ presence on the battlefield into consideration. Ho Chi Minh founded the Indochina Communist Party in 1930. Indochina, which meant Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia was used by the French. For this reason, Ho Chi Minh aimed to expel the colonists not only from Vietnam but from all over Indochina. For a long time, the French were ruling Indochina with Japan being a serious threat. With the defeat of Japan, the colonists again began to consider conquering the region. In Vietnam, France first entered the war and fought with the Communists for about eight years and eventually was defeated.
Consequently, in 1954 at the Geneva Conference the military defeat of France and the division of Vietnam into two parts were officially declared: The North and South Vietnam.
The United States was not satisfied with the outcome of the conference and entered the Vietnam War. According to the view of John Foster Dulles and the National Security Council Report No. 68 that the United States must confront and prevent communist influence everywhere, the United States engaged in the Vietnam War to defend the capitalist system. In fact, the factors that caused the United States to enter the Vietnam War have included its commitment to defending the free world against the Communists according to the National Security Council No. 68, and the militant members of military-industrial complexes such as Charles E. Wilson, Maxwell D. Taylor, and McNamara, who encouraged the presidents to enter and continue the war and always talked about victory.
The Invasion of Iraq (1990)
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, it was expected that the Pentagon’s budget would decline and the government spend it on education, health, and social welfare of which people were highly in need. But the influential military-industrial complexes, who felt the danger, stepped in to highlight another external threat, instead of communism and the Soviet Union, in an attempt to maintain their interests and prevent the reduction of the Pentagon budget. They imbued the American people with this idea that the current danger that threatens the United States interests is less developed autocratic governments in the world.
Hence, the proponents of militarism and military-industrial complexes turned to adopt a new definition of sources of threat in the post-Cold War era. According to such definition, “these new sources of threat are rooted in unpredictable and unreliable powers in the so-called the “Third World” and instead of the Soviet Union, we have to deal with the menace of China, Fidel Castro, drug lords, and more recently, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and the “Axis of Evil” –Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
In fact, after the Iran-Iraq War, the United States was looking for a way to establish its presence in the Middle East for which the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait provided a pretext. Saddam’s regime attacked Kuwait by the green light of the United States government, as was the case with the invasion of Iran, and thus the United States under the pretext of supporting its dependent and dominated governments has been able to expand its presence in the region and achieve its regional and international goals to establish a new world order, especially at a time when the Eastern superpower had collapsed. The words of President George W. Bush at the time clearly illustrate the policy of this country and support this view. During the war, he stated that “the issue is not just a small country; our goal is a new belief, a new world order in which different countries come together to achieve humanity’s universal aspirations of peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.”
They carried out their plan by showing the green light to Saddam in the invasion of Kuwait and have come to the Middle East with the permission of the Security Council. Thus, people like Dick Cheney, Colin Powell played a major role in the United States’ re-entry into and invasion of the Middle East.
The United States Invasion of Iraq (2003)
From January 1991, when General Norman Schwarzkopf led the intimal operations, until March 19, 2003, when General Tommy Franks issued orders to launch a British-American invasion of Iraq, we have witnessed a massive expansion of the United States military bases in the Persian Gulf.
The significant and controversial signs of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq can be found in the negotiations and documents of the early 1990s which show the United States’ willingness to conduct the so-called preventive military operations. At this time, the Pentagon officials, under the leadership of Dick Cheney, the Secretary of Defence during the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, and Vice President Paul Wolfowitz devised the United States military strategy for the post-Cold War era. This document was drafted and published in 1992 by the title of “Defence Planning Guidance.” The document was crafted by Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as the Assistant vice president at the time and later the United States Ambassador to Iraq, and Lewis Libby, who held the offices of Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs that time and then became the Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States.
Criticizing Clinton’s defence policy, the authors of the Defence Planning Guidance document, called for arming Saddam’s opposition groups and sending troops to defend their bases in southern Iraq so that Saddam’s regime would collapse. In 1996, Paul Wolfowitz through an article propounded a plan for carrying out a preventive military operation against Saddam. In fact, in the late 1990s, during Clinton’s second term, Pentagon was fully prepared for the second invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam. On 19 February 1998, some of the Lobby groups and individuals along with their agents in the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, in an open letter to the United States President Clinton, presented the comprehensive plan of the United States political and military strategy to oust Saddam and his regime.
Among those who have signed the letter, there were some of the Bush administration officials such as Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Douglas Feith, who served as the undersecretary of Defence for Policy, Richard Armitage (Department of Defence), John Bolton (Department of Defence), Fred Acle (Defence Policy Board), Paul Wolfowitz (Department of Defence), Zalmay Khalilzad (the United States’ Ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan), Peter Rodman (Department of Defence), Richard Perle (Defence Policy Board), Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defence), Dave Zakaym (Department of Defence), William Kristol (editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard), Frank Gaffney (president of the Centre for Security Policy), Joshua Muravchik (American Enterprise Institute), Martin Peretz (editor-in-chief of The New Republic), Leon Wieseltier (The New Republic), and Stephen Joshua Solarz (the Congressional Representative from New York).
In September 2000, “The Project for the New American Century” became another leverage of neo-conservatives to wage wars. The report called on the United States government to attack Iraq to expand its presence in the Middle East. The people who signed the report’s founding statement of principles included Dick Cheney (Vice President) Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defence), Paul Wolfowitz (Secretary of Defence), Louis Libby (Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney) and William Kristol editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard.
These pieces of evidence show that the civilian adherents of militarism representing the interests of military-industrial complexes had planned the attack on Iraq long before the 9/11 incident and that 9/11 was just an excuse to carry out the plan.
When Bush entered the White House, the opportunity was provided to put the Defence Planning Guidance into action, and before the United States Supreme Court announces the outcome of the election, Dick Cheney along with a number of his disciples came to Washington and was settled in the White House. Thus, the presidency of Bush brought all those who have crafted the Defence Planning Guidance entered the White House in the early 1990s. Dick Cheney became the Vice President, Colin Powell took the position of Secretary of State, Wolfowitz was appointed as the Pentagon No. 2 official i.e. the United States’ Deputy Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and Lewis Libby became Cheney’s Chief of Staff.
The 9/11 attacks provided the pretext of invading Iraq for the Pentagon and military-industrial complexes that have had a wide influence on the government. Therefore, soon after the attacks, the Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld demanded an immediate invasion of Iraq.
In fact, the key elements of the national security strategy of George W. Bush’s administration had been outlined before his presidency by conservative lobbies of major corporations, such as the Security Policy Centre and the National Institute of Public Policy as well as the Project for the New American Century. In the meantime, the unilateralist ideologues that were once associated with these lobbies became the driving force behind the United States military and foreign policy, along with the 32 senior executives in the Bush administration who had been counted among the main shareholders, advisors, and presidents of large arms manufacturers.
Conclusion
Because of its diverse community, the United States has many influential groups that have always sought to influence the process of policy-making. In this study, we sought to find an appropriate answer to the question that what is the role of military-industrial complexes, as one of these influential groups, in United States foreign policy? Based on the aforementioned points, we can argue that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between the role and activity of military-industrial complexes and the United States foreign policymakers. In fact, the post-World War II conditions of the international system increased the power and wealth of military-industrial complexes, which greatly expanded the influence of these complexes on United States foreign policy. It was not until World War II, where United States foreign policy was concentrated on the American continent, that military-industrial complexes enjoyed significant power to influence the United States foreign policy, but with The United States engagement in the war, the military’s inability to produce military equipment and weapons created an alliance between military-industrial complexes, military commanders, and politicians. Such a strong alliance was maintained during the era of Cold War and bipolar systems and has continued to this day.
The case studies provided in the final section of the article indicate that the influence of military-industrial complexes on foreign policy during the Cold War triggered the United States military intervention in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, increased tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States and eventually led to the invasion of Iraq (the first Gulf War).
With the end of the Cold War, proponents of militarism and military-industrial complexes have turned to new definitions of sources of threat, based on which the United States has to deal with and counter the menace of China, Castro in Cuba, major drug traffickers, terrorism, the weapons of mass destruction and the axis of evil (Iran, Iraq and North Korea).
Therefore, the policy of defining the sources of threat and the alliance of military-industrial complexes with neoconservative groups which were formed in the 1970s and 1980s continued after the Cold War and the September 11, 2001 attacks, whereby a golden opportunity would be provided for more radicalization of United States foreign policy to preserve the interests of military-industrial complexes.
In fact, the influence of these complexes and their alliance with the neoconservatives have driven American foreign policy toward unilateralism, militarization, and igniting the flames of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. As long as the interest of these complexes ingrained with such policy, we cannot expect the United States foreign policy to be significantly distanced from interventionism.
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