A democratic republic affords
many avenues for organized private interests to influence public policy. The
fact that such interests are organized is enough to outweigh the influenced of
an organized constituency. Add in the money available to organized interests
and the imbalance is exaggerated. The military industrial complex—the “informal”
alliance between a military and private defense-contractors is a case in point
in the United States.
At the end of his second term in 1961, President Eisenhower warned the American people of the abuses of power that can come from the military’s alliance with its defense-contractors. The influence of the alliance, in other words, could come to trump the influence of the electorate and what is in the best interests of the United States in the world. After World War II, a permanent armaments industry emerged; the president was concerned that its influence would grow too much. He said, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence. . . . The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”[1] Once such power exists, it can protect itself even from threats from the electorate. Such protection can be explicit, as in efforts to keep the U.S. in a war, such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were quite long ones.
Roughly sixty years after Eisenhower’s farewell speech, President Trump publicly claimed that the U.S. military seeks to do the bidding of the defense contractors.[2] Such an open admission was itself startling, for the president was telling the electorate that private companies effectively control defense policy. The interests of such companies are private, and thus partial, rather than being identical to the public good, which a republic’s government is supposed to enact and protect. Where a few strong interests, whether that of the financial sector or defense contractors, can control elected representatives, a democracy can actually be a mere gloss for the books. A republic is thus vulnerable.
1. “President Eisenhower Warns of Military-Industrial Complex,” History.com, November 16, 2009.
2. Maeve Reston, “Trump Presses On after Rough Week with His Presidential Image in Shambles,” CNN.com, September 12, 2020.
