Dynamique
01-17-2011, 11:54 PM
Eisenhower's Warning Still Challenges A Nation
https://www.npr.org/2011/01/16/132935716/eisenhowers-warning-still-challenges-the-nation?ps=cprs
January 16, 2011
Before President Reagan urged Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," and even before
President Kennedy told Americans to ask "what you can
do for your country," President Dwight D. Eisenhower
coined his own phrase about "the military-industrial
complex."
That statement, spoken just days before Eisenhower left
office in 1961, was his warning to the nation.
At the time, the United States was sitting atop a huge
military establishment built from its participation in
three major wars. This buildup led Eisenhower to
caution against the misplacement of power and influence
of the military.
Fifty years later, the United States is engaged in two
wars abroad, and some say Eisenhower's warning still
holds true.
A Call For An 'Alert And Knowledgeable Citizenry'
While some historians have written off Eisenhower's
farewell address as an afterthought, his grandson,
David Eisenhower, says it was a speech the president
spent months crafting.
"He did know it was going to have an impact," David
Eisenhower tells Weekend All Things Considered host Guy
Raz.
David Eisenhower is the director of the Institute for
Public Service at the Annenberg School of Communication
and co-authored the book Going Home To Glory: A Memoir
of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower.
It was Eisenhower's somber words about the military
that caught peoples' attention.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against
the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex," he said in his farewell address. "The
potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist."
Eisenhower's warning was all the more powerful coming
from a five-star general.
"The feeling among Eisenhower's allies was that
Eisenhower had said something that in one way or
another would undermine the position of many political
allies that he had," David Eisenhower says.
Those allies worried that Eisenhower's words would be
used against them, particularly as the Vietnam War
began. Had the president handed antiwar activists a
slogan they could use to oppose the conflict? David
Eisenhower contends his grandfather was not concerned
with the political fallout.
"I have immersed myself professionally for many years
in the Eisenhower papers," he says. "I know how his
mind worked. I know what his habits of expression were.
This is Dwight Eisenhower in the farewell address, and
he speaks the truth."
Though most people remember Eisenhower's speech for its
warning about the growing influence of the Pentagon,
David Eisenhower says the president had another
message.
"Eisenhower's farewell address, in the final analysis,
is about internal threats posed by vested interests to
the democratic process," he says. "But above all, it is
addressed to citizens and about citizenship."
"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel
the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military
machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and
goals," Eisenhower said in his address.
An Unwelcome Warning
Eisenhower's message was spot-on, but came too late,
says Andrew Bacevich, a retired career officer in the
U.S. Army and professor of history and international
relations at Boston University.
"I think we should view the speech as an admission of
failure on the president's part," Bacevich tells Raz,
"an acknowledgment that he was unable to curb
tendencies that he had recognized, from the very outset
of his presidency, were problematic."
During Eisenhower's presidency, defense spending
accounted for 10 percent of gross domestic product,
almost double today's percentage. But for Eisenhower to
pull out the scissors and make cuts to the defense
budget would have been declared anathema; the nation
was prospering.
"In the 1950s, a guns-and-butter recipe seemingly had
worked," Bacevich says. "We were safe and we were
prosperous, so what was not to like?" That's not the
case today, he says.
"We can no longer insist on having both guns and
butter," Bacevich says. "We are compromising the
possibility of sustaining genuine prosperity at home."
As Eisenhower warned, "Every gun that is made, every
warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the
final sense, a theft. The cost of one modern, heavy
bomber is this: a modern, brick school in more than 30
cities."
Just as Eisenhower had trouble convincing Congress to
re-examine the role of the U.S. military five decades
ago, Bacevich says America's leadership has similar
difficulties today.
"Our political institutions demonstrate an
unwillingness, or an inability, to really take on the
big questions," Bacevich says. "And the American people
many of them distracted by all kinds of concerns,
like having a job when there's almost 10-percent
unemployment aren't paying attention."
Bacevich insists that its time for Americans to review
the belief that the United States needs to maintain a
global military presence to safeguard national
security. "There was a time, I think, in the Eisenhower
era, military presence abroad was useful," he says. No
longer.
"Maintaining U.S. military forces in the so-called
'Greater Middle East' doesn't contribute to stability
it contributes to instability," Bacevich says. "It
increases anti-Americanism. So why persist in the
belief that maintaining all these U.S. forces scattered
around the globe are necessary?"
If Americans could challenge that assumption, Bacevich
says, then maybe it would be possible to have "a
different and more modest national security posture
that will be more affordable and still keep the
country safe."
___________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.
https://www.npr.org/2011/01/16/132935716/eisenhowers-warning-still-challenges-the-nation?ps=cprs
January 16, 2011
Before President Reagan urged Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," and even before
President Kennedy told Americans to ask "what you can
do for your country," President Dwight D. Eisenhower
coined his own phrase about "the military-industrial
complex."
That statement, spoken just days before Eisenhower left
office in 1961, was his warning to the nation.
At the time, the United States was sitting atop a huge
military establishment built from its participation in
three major wars. This buildup led Eisenhower to
caution against the misplacement of power and influence
of the military.
Fifty years later, the United States is engaged in two
wars abroad, and some say Eisenhower's warning still
holds true.
A Call For An 'Alert And Knowledgeable Citizenry'
While some historians have written off Eisenhower's
farewell address as an afterthought, his grandson,
David Eisenhower, says it was a speech the president
spent months crafting.
"He did know it was going to have an impact," David
Eisenhower tells Weekend All Things Considered host Guy
Raz.
David Eisenhower is the director of the Institute for
Public Service at the Annenberg School of Communication
and co-authored the book Going Home To Glory: A Memoir
of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower.
It was Eisenhower's somber words about the military
that caught peoples' attention.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against
the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex," he said in his farewell address. "The
potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist."
Eisenhower's warning was all the more powerful coming
from a five-star general.
"The feeling among Eisenhower's allies was that
Eisenhower had said something that in one way or
another would undermine the position of many political
allies that he had," David Eisenhower says.
Those allies worried that Eisenhower's words would be
used against them, particularly as the Vietnam War
began. Had the president handed antiwar activists a
slogan they could use to oppose the conflict? David
Eisenhower contends his grandfather was not concerned
with the political fallout.
"I have immersed myself professionally for many years
in the Eisenhower papers," he says. "I know how his
mind worked. I know what his habits of expression were.
This is Dwight Eisenhower in the farewell address, and
he speaks the truth."
Though most people remember Eisenhower's speech for its
warning about the growing influence of the Pentagon,
David Eisenhower says the president had another
message.
"Eisenhower's farewell address, in the final analysis,
is about internal threats posed by vested interests to
the democratic process," he says. "But above all, it is
addressed to citizens and about citizenship."
"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel
the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military
machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and
goals," Eisenhower said in his address.
An Unwelcome Warning
Eisenhower's message was spot-on, but came too late,
says Andrew Bacevich, a retired career officer in the
U.S. Army and professor of history and international
relations at Boston University.
"I think we should view the speech as an admission of
failure on the president's part," Bacevich tells Raz,
"an acknowledgment that he was unable to curb
tendencies that he had recognized, from the very outset
of his presidency, were problematic."
During Eisenhower's presidency, defense spending
accounted for 10 percent of gross domestic product,
almost double today's percentage. But for Eisenhower to
pull out the scissors and make cuts to the defense
budget would have been declared anathema; the nation
was prospering.
"In the 1950s, a guns-and-butter recipe seemingly had
worked," Bacevich says. "We were safe and we were
prosperous, so what was not to like?" That's not the
case today, he says.
"We can no longer insist on having both guns and
butter," Bacevich says. "We are compromising the
possibility of sustaining genuine prosperity at home."
As Eisenhower warned, "Every gun that is made, every
warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the
final sense, a theft. The cost of one modern, heavy
bomber is this: a modern, brick school in more than 30
cities."
Just as Eisenhower had trouble convincing Congress to
re-examine the role of the U.S. military five decades
ago, Bacevich says America's leadership has similar
difficulties today.
"Our political institutions demonstrate an
unwillingness, or an inability, to really take on the
big questions," Bacevich says. "And the American people
many of them distracted by all kinds of concerns,
like having a job when there's almost 10-percent
unemployment aren't paying attention."
Bacevich insists that its time for Americans to review
the belief that the United States needs to maintain a
global military presence to safeguard national
security. "There was a time, I think, in the Eisenhower
era, military presence abroad was useful," he says. No
longer.
"Maintaining U.S. military forces in the so-called
'Greater Middle East' doesn't contribute to stability
it contributes to instability," Bacevich says. "It
increases anti-Americanism. So why persist in the
belief that maintaining all these U.S. forces scattered
around the globe are necessary?"
If Americans could challenge that assumption, Bacevich
says, then maybe it would be possible to have "a
different and more modest national security posture
that will be more affordable and still keep the
country safe."
___________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.