“.  .  . vast bureaucracies of civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil.” (Winston Churchill)

In 1961 President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the danger of a military-industrial complex. This powerful public-private collaboration, he said, had the potential to exert “unwarranted influence” over America’s democratic processes. A half-century later, there are still those on the left who cling to this fear. But it seems that Eisenhower’s warning had its intended effect—and perhaps then some. In 1961 defense spending constituted 9.1 percent of the gross domestic product, and there were 2,483,000 uniformed military personnel. Today, defense spending is 3.2 percent of GDP and 1,390,000 men and women serve in the uniformed military. If this behemoth is threatening America’s democratic processes, it is not doing so very successfully.