The Aftermath of 9/11 and the Military-Industrial Complex

I'm back in the archives again to find this post, written on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, that begins with U.S. President Eisenhower's coining of the Military-Industrial Complex and ends with questions about the economic and political rise of China and India.

Shaping the Future (published 13th September 2011 on DeAlign)

When US President Dwight Eisenhower gave his final television address in 1961 he sounded a warning that has echoed ever since. In those final, prescient paragraphs, he underlined and worried for the continuing and unbreakable bond between economy and the making of war. He called it the Military-Industrial Complex. On the tenth anniversary of the attacks on New York City and Washington D.C., his words seem as relevant now as they did half a century ago.

Alongside remembrance, this week many voices have raised asking questions about our world since that September day: what we learned, how the attacks shaped our politics and cultural discourse for a decade, and where the next 10 years will take us.

It is only human that we seek to understand both the act itself and its impact, to place it somehow within a context, even to revise our view of it over and over, as time passes. So it is inevitable that on the tenth anniversary, we are so overwhelmed by these questions.

When Eisenhower spoke about the Military-Industrial Complex, he was talking about the moral and political risks the US was taking in building its military might. Faced with the threat of the opposing ideology of Communism, he argued that the US must arm itself to such a degree that no enemy would “risk its own destruction”, but he also warned that a military of such power, determined constantly to improve its reach and capacity, could overwhelm American values of democracy and citizenry in its wake.

“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.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush announced the commencement of a ‘War on Terror’ and he enlisted a willing helper in the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Between them they established a new doctrine of Western power. Blair had already marked himself out as an interventionist in Kosovo, so perhaps it was unsurprising that he immediately, as we have learned, offered the US all the political and military support it required to prosecute its decade-defining conflicts.

It has been Tony Blair who, once again, has been re-explaining and defending his decision making in the months and years after the attacks. What is particularly striking is the language he uses to describe what he sees as the continuing threat. Speaking on the Today programme last week, he asserted that an ideological and dangerous ‘Islamist’ force still sits in opposition to ‘Western values’ and that radical Islamists are seeking the opportunity to attack at any point. He was insistent that Iran was the fulcrum of this movement, that further attacks were inevitable and that the threat of terror persists and must be dealt with. He also resisted any suggestion that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism was in any way related to the response to 9/11 visited upon Iraq and Afghanistan by the US and Great Britain.

Eisenhower, even though he was deeply concerned about the ideological and military threat of Communism, made the point that the strength of that threat should not lead to the abandonment of the very values America sought to uphold. Given that many in the West have considerable anxieties about the weakening of civil liberties and habeas corpus since 9/11 for citizens and enemies alike, it would be interesting to know where Eisenhower would position himself now. Perhaps he would have something to say to Blair and Bush?

By contrast, President Obama, despite reiterating the terrorist threat to the United States, speaks with a very different tone to Mr Blair. In fact, his message to the American people stated exactly Bin Laden’s objective over the last two decades, not the theatrical and devastating mass murder of 9/11, but long-term economic destruction. In his weekly address on Friday he said, "They want to draw us into endless wars, sapping our strength and confidence as a nation. But even as we put relentless pressure on al-Qaida we are ending the war in Iraq and beginning to bring our troops home from Afghanistan. After a hard decade of war it is time for nation building here at home". Here is an American President, after the first attack on the US mainland since the War of Independence and 10 years of crippling foreign wars, striking an isolationist pose. Can the President finally resist those military-industrial powers?

Consider the damage that 9/11 wrought on America’s economic prospects over the last 10 years. As the country fought wars on two fronts as well as its internal threats, China and India continued their extraordinary economic ascension, unchecked. The United States is a wounded animal, the enormity of its military spending since September 2001 has made its recovery from the economic disaster of the global banking crisis, long and slow.

When Obama came to office, the American people were desperate to step back from war and anxious about their own record on civil liberties, so he promised an exit from Iraq and Afghanistan and the closure of Guantánamo Bay. Now, American anxiety is focused on a loss of economic power. In the absence of any serious homeland attack for 10 years and with a deficit so enormous it is basically incomprehensible, perhaps it feels safer to pull down the nation’s shutters?

Let’s not forget, America as the world’s policeman was a twentieth century invention. The Founding Fathers were isolationists and anti-imperialists, having resisted the forces of those lovers of empire, the British. They were concerned with individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness, perhaps it is that which America craves now.

So here we have two positions, Tony Blair, the European envoy to the Middle East warning of a terrible and persistent threat to “our values and our way of life” and our need to address it militarily, and President Obama, seeking to return to the home fires, work on his job plan and rebuild his country (if, of course, the American people will take him back in 2012).

It is the battle between these two positions that will define the next 10 years of American and European foreign policy. But, as China and India continue to build their economic power, it is their geo-political allegiances that will shape the wider world.