Endless War and the Military-Industrial Complex

Okay, so while I was in Berlin with my host brother I remarked to him that the Republicans in the USA like to start wars in order to fuel the military-industrial complex. But then another idea popped into my head.
Would it be possible to sustain an economy, or at least prop it up, through the perpetuation of low-level, non-threatening (in a geopolitical sense) warfare? Here's some things that one would hypothetically do in making "military" a viable economic sector:
- Spend a good amount of money on military development, including technology and doctrine. The tech can help other sectors of the economy.
- Field a small standing army consisting of professionals. Conscripts are a no-no because they would lead to dissent in the long term.
- Find some places to intervene and fight! At least 1.5 conflicts should be in progress at any given time.
- On the home front, take control of the media and convince people that the wars are for justice, for peace, whatever. At the same time, develop social programs (education, health) for the military that can be slowly extended to families of soldiers, those working in support roles to the military etc.
-- The above leads to the national feeling of "People and Soldiers are United!", particularly through the army-based socialism.
- Spoils of War. You might not be able to convince the population to support some endless, meaningless war just by saying "it's good", so make sure the population actually feels like there's progress being made, by actually winning the wars, bringing stability to the region, thus helping one's own nation indirectly.
-- In addition, the above makes sure that the "military" sector of the economy isn't just for show, and that real gains can be made through the MI complex. This sets a military optimized for the economy apart from the conventional view that "you can't eat a tank".

Now I'm no expert in any field. If the above is complete, unsustainable bullcrap, I would be glad to hear why.
Secondly, I do not advocate continuous warfare. I just want to see if a government of some kind* could actually sustain economic success through an "economically-optimized military effort".

Thoughts?
 
What you describe sounds a lot like Oceania from 1984, with most of the differences being down to the different necessities of the governments (broadly speaking, in your scenario the government co-opts the people, while Oceania seeks to dominate them). I think that, therefor, your hypothetical state would end up much like Oceania: workable in theory, but in practice implausible.
 
Okay, so while I was in Berlin with my host brother I remarked to him that the Republicans in the USA like to start wars in order to fuel the military-industrial complex. But then another idea popped into my head.
Would it be possible to sustain an economy, or at least prop it up, through the perpetuation of low-level, non-threatening (in a geopolitical sense) warfare? Here's some things that one would hypothetically do in making "military" a viable economic sector:
- Spend a good amount of money on military development, including technology and doctrine. The tech can help other sectors of the economy.
- Field a small standing army consisting of professionals. Conscripts are a no-no because they would lead to dissent in the long term.
- Find some places to intervene and fight! At least 1.5 conflicts should be in progress at any given time.
- On the home front, take control of the media and convince people that the wars are for justice, for peace, whatever. At the same time, develop social programs (education, health) for the military that can be slowly extended to families of soldiers, those working in support roles to the military etc.
-- The above leads to the national feeling of "People and Soldiers are United!", particularly through the army-based socialism.
- Spoils of War. You might not be able to convince the population to support some endless, meaningless war just by saying "it's good", so make sure the population actually feels like there's progress being made, by actually winning the wars, bringing stability to the region, thus helping one's own nation indirectly.
-- In addition, the above makes sure that the "military" sector of the economy isn't just for show, and that real gains can be made through the MI complex. This sets a military optimized for the economy apart from the conventional view that "you can't eat a tank".

Now I'm no expert in any field. If the above is complete, unsustainable bullcrap, I would be glad to hear why.
Secondly, I do not advocate continuous warfare. I just want to see if a government of some kind* could actually sustain economic success through an "economically-optimized military effort".

Thoughts?

Seeing as you've more or less described the present situation, it's probably not wholly unsustainable.
 
This sounds a lot like the videogame Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots. A near future where war is a business and nations are run by the military-industrial complex. The wars are fought by various Private Military Companies against terrorists or against each other.
 

Typo

Banned
- Spend a good amount of money on military development, including technology and doctrine. The tech can help other sectors of the economy.
This is actually what is happening
- Field a small standing army consisting of professionals. Conscripts are a no-no because they would lead to dissent in the long term.
This is actually what is happening
- Find some places to intervene and fight! At least 1.5 conflicts should be in progress at any given time.
This is actually what is happening
- On the home front, take control of the media and convince people that the wars are for justice, for peace, whatever. At the same time, develop social programs (education, health) for the military that can be slowly extended to families of soldiers, those working in support roles to the military etc.
This is actually what is happening
-- The above leads to the national feeling of "People and Soldiers are United!", particularly through the army-based socialism.
This is actually what is happening sort of
- Spoils of War. You might not be able to convince the population to support some endless, meaningless war just by saying "it's good", so make sure the population actually feels like there's progress being made, by actually winning the wars, bringing stability to the region, thus helping one's own nation indirectly.
This is what's suppose to happen but that didn't turn out well at all
-- In addition, the above makes sure that the "military" sector of the economy isn't just for show, and that real gains can be made through the MI complex. This sets a military optimized for the economy apart from the conventional view that "you can't eat a tank".
States like Nazi Germany and Rome manage to do this for a while, but eventually the whole fell apart since ultimately you are just using looting to keep the state afloat. And sooner or later you are going to be out of places where you can loot for a profit and/or trigger a war of everyone against you.
 
As Herr Typo points out, this is largely the way the actual military industrial complex functions in OTL. Except, significantly, for the 1.5 wars bit. Instead the US typically has a new war every 8-12 years - politically speaking this is precisely because there is no enthusiasm for "endless war."

More broadly though, you need a power like the US that has available a huge number of dramatically weaker states. Even marginally equitable wars either lead to empire building (so eventually having noone to fight) or exhaustion.

Of course, in some ways the largest militaries drive economies less well in wartime. It is, at root, straighforward Keynesian economics. You pay a whole lot of people really well, then their spending becomes a source of economic growth. You build a whole lot of tools, send them to be destroyed, then replace them. At that point the system does need some conflict or threat to justify its existence, yes. But also it is reliant on the consumerism of soldiers and soldiers' families, which have a tendency to die and break up, respectively.
 
I just don't buy the idea of the military industrial complex actually being in the USA. I've heard the argument several times before, and I'll ask you what I ask them; what specific wars are as a result of the military industrial complex? Where some see military industrial complex, I see Pax-Americana; The USA acts as the world police, insofar as the USA during the 20th century maintained a global hegemony. The wars and military interventions were done to maintain what some call 'The American Empire', but is generally just American foreign policy worldwide. It's called 'The American Century' for a reason. Not saying I agree with the policy, I'm just saying that's how I see it.

The main problem I see with the Military-Industrial complex is that it falls prey to the Broken Window Fallacy. There is a subsection titled 'War' on the wiki page of the fallacy! Simply put,the money being spent on the war effort to fuel the military-industrial complex would have otherwise been spent by the government on the economy. In fact, spending on social services, various industrial subsidies, infrastructure spending, and really any other such programs would aid the economy far more than spending it on the military-industrial complex, because fighting wars are damn expensive. Look at all the billions the United States has thrown away from their economy into Iraq and Afghanistan. It is this last point that makes the military-industrial complex so infeasible--it just doesn't work. The only way to make money on a war is to seize actual, physical spoils, like rich oilfields. And once the government does decide to seize the spoils of war, we have a textbook example of a country invading another for resources, just like a million other nations throughout history, from Rome to Napoleonic France to Nazi Germany. No fancy moniker like 'military-industrial complex is needed'. Whereas if you don't seize any rich resources, like your scenario seems to imply, then you just have a bankrupt nation.
 

Typo

Banned
I just don't buy the idea of the military industrial complex actually being in the USA.
I see Pax-Americana; The USA acts as the world police, insofar as the USA during the 20th century maintained a global hegemony. The wars and military interventions were done to maintain what some call 'The American Empire', but is generally just American foreign policy worldwide.
Those two are not mutually exclusive
 
I just don't buy the idea of the military industrial complex actually being in the USA. I've heard the argument several times before, and I'll ask you what I ask them; what specific wars are as a result of the military industrial complex? Where some see military industrial complex, I see Pax-Americana; The USA acts as the world police, insofar as the USA during the 20th century maintained a global hegemony. The wars and military interventions were done to maintain what some call 'The American Empire', but is generally just American foreign policy worldwide. It's called 'The American Century' for a reason. Not saying I agree with the policy, I'm just saying that's how I see it.

You're responding more to the innaccurate superficial conception of the term than to the reality. In reality, industry has very little to do with the decision to go to war, that's quite correct. The industry of having a military doesn't sustain itself by self driven wars. Instead it exists by being too big to be allowed to fail. Military hardware drives industries that add up to tens of millions of jobs directly and indirectly. Because cutting back significantly would (aside from other problems) be at first economically ruinous, better targets of government spending are ignored. So how does it "cause" wars? By ability. The size and quality of the military allows wars that would be unfeasible for other countries.

In short, the industry is too big to fail and, because of it, the military too good to be risky to use.

The main problem I see with the Military-Industrial complex is that it falls prey to the Broken Window Fallacy. There is a subsection titled 'War' on the wiki page of the fallacy! Simply put,the money being spent on the war effort to fuel the military-industrial complex would have otherwise been spent by the government on the economy. In fact, spending on social services, various industrial subsidies, infrastructure spending, and really any other such programs would aid the economy far more than spending it on the military-industrial complex, because fighting wars are damn expensive. Look at all the billions the United States has thrown away from their economy into Iraq and Afghanistan. It is this last point that makes the military-industrial complex so infeasible--it just doesn't work. The only way to make money on a war is to seize actual, physical spoils, like rich oilfields. And once the government does decide to seize the spoils of war, we have a textbook example of a country invading another for resources, just like a million other nations throughout history, from Rome to Napoleonic France to Nazi Germany. No fancy moniker like 'military-industrial complex is needed'. Whereas if you don't seize any rich resources, like your scenario seems to imply, then you just have a bankrupt nation.

But countries don't make decisions based on their total interests. They make decisions by the accumulated interests and indifference of many individuals.

It's the same argument made that colonialism in Africa wasn't driven by greed because it often was not profitable for the colonizing power. In point of fact, a great many individuals and companies were motivated by greed. It's a fallacy to limit the definition of greed to successful greed. They put themselves into their target regions, some succeeding while others failed. Governments then came in to protect them, to regulate them, and for prestige reasons.

A country can be utterly ruined by its actions, and many have been, when a powerful enough force exists within it to influence its decisions. That force may have very different interests than the nation. Indeed, most states have or have had a group with disproportionate power that follows its own interests rather than those of the state.
 
The defence buget of the US is something like 5 or 6% of GDP and military procurement is about 40% of that. In the grand scheme of things the MIC is a piss in the ocean compared to regular consumer spending. I once read an anecdote about Chrysler Tank division giving a breifing to Lee Iaocca saying they made $150 million profit last year, his reply was that wouldn't keep Chrysler from bankrupcy for a month, and this was back in the 80s. Endless war would have to be at such a low level that the rest of the economy could perk along well enough to support it.
 
In the UK at least, low-level war has been pretty bad for the "military-industrial complex". Operations in Afghanistan are draining money from big procurement programmes like shipbuilding, and plenty of politicians now have "proof" that things like armour, jets, ships etc are irrelevant and unaffordable. Unless your country has the budget to fund procurement and actual fighting, constant low-level war is not good for the defence industry. As Riain says, defence spending is tiny compared to a lot of programmes, which is especially the case in countries other than the US. I've never understood the conspiracy that major wars like WW1 were all a business plot to support industry, theres few things worse from most businesses perspective than the state growing in power, consumer spending falling off a cliff, customers dying and international trade collapsing
 
You're responding more to the innaccurate superficial conception of the term than to the reality. In reality, industry has very little to do with the decision to go to war, that's quite correct. The industry of having a military doesn't sustain itself by self driven wars. Instead it exists by being too big to be allowed to fail. Military hardware drives industries that add up to tens of millions of jobs directly and indirectly. Because cutting back significantly would (aside from other problems) be at first economically ruinous, better targets of government spending are ignored. So how does it "cause" wars? By ability. The size and quality of the military allows wars that would be unfeasible for other countries.

In short, the industry is too big to fail and, because of it, the military too good to be risky to use.

By going with the definition of military-industrial complex that LeoXiao set up, my point still stands. By your definition, the military-industrial complex is just an iron triangle.
 
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