I met the Military-industrial Complex at the first class of my university life: Professor Fahir Armaoğlu introduced us to the bleary-eyed first graders at the Faculty of Political Science (SBF) in Ankara. Later, throughout the years, we heard its name mentioned here and there, but my learning all about it would wait until I enrolled in professor Samuel P. Huntington’s class at the Center for International Affairs (the “other” CIA, as the young fellas jokingly called it! Then, it didn’t have Weatherhead in front of its name!)
Sam (as he insisted that we should be on friendly terms in his seminars and all should be on a first-name basis) had a very different method of bringing current events into discussions in the classroom: He would summarize something that had happened that week on the international arena and ask the class the consequences of it in the coming weeks. At the beginning of the Spring semester in 1985, Palestinian Arab militants from Abu Nidal's militant group opened fire at the counters of El Al in the airports of Rome and Vienna; 18 Israelis were killed and 40 were injured. “Abu Nidal” was Sabri Khalil al-Banna’s ‘nom de guerre’ – he had formed his own fraction after a split from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). That afternoon, Sam pushed us to explain how that act of terrorism was going to affect the overall popular perception of the Palestinian issue in America. He insisted that we should try to evaluate (1) how that event would be handled by the Israel lobby and (2) how the U.S. military and industry would react to it. 1985 had been a particularly eventful year regarding the Israel-Palestinian conflict. If you remember, the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked in the Mediterranean by Palestinian militants right before that El Al raid at the airport.
Professor Huntington’s insistence that we should be looking at these terror acts, particularly from their political implications and social impressions in the U.S., from the agency of a lobbying organization was, to say the least, “fresh” for me, very unusual because, until then, the U.S. and Israel were so joined at the hip that, I never imagined that deep bond, that connectedness which far surpassed casual friendship, was something other than natural. Sam was hinting that the U.S. loyalty to everything about Israel was the result of a political effort, an artificial creation of a political and social organization!
It was so new for my perception of American society; I and many people I know would automatically think of the U.S. as the largest Jewish country in the world and instinctively say that the U.S. would support Israel no matter what it does! You didn’t have to have a lobby organization for that! But then, several other colleagues and I in that seminary room learned something.
Years later, in 2007, when the book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt came out, I also learned from its preface that professor Huntington had worked with the authors “for more than twenty years” in their quest to understand the causes and effects of the Israel Lobby (with a capital L), and he had been “gracious and supportive” of their work. So, professors Mearsheimer and Walt dedicated the book to him.
Its authors, two of the most distinguished political scientists of our generation, have affected great service to American, Israeli and Palestinian people by simply pointing to the fact that the “Lobby” forced American politics to support Israel against its own national interests. In fact, the way Israel was created was not natural; almost all the prominent Jewish scholars opposed the Zionists stealing the idea of “a homeland for the Jewish people.” The U.N. Partition Plan – Resolution 181 (1947) had been rejected by the Arab countries. Albert Einstein and Hannah Arent, along with other Jewish luminaries, published a letter in the New York Times on Dec. 4, 1948, criticizing the Jews for the Deir Yassin massacre of Palestinians and stressing the need for cooperation between Jews and Arabs.
Mearsheimer and Walt advocate that the "Israel Lobby" is largely responsible for America's unbalanced and historically pro-Israeli Middle East policy. They argue that this policy is destructive to the U.S. national interests. Mearsheimer and Walt had been subject to several vicious attacks, and their book now dominates the discussion of this political “elephant” in the room. Especially professor Mearsheimer is on the TV talk shows and YouTube podcasts after the Gaza Genocide, about which he wouldn’t mince words and predict the worst for the region and the U.S.
There is only one more issue that Samual Huntington reminded us of in his Center for International Affairs spring semester in 1985: The reaction of the U.S. military and industry to the events developing in Israel. When you use these two words, military and industry, in close proximity, you need a third one: complex! So, the expression “military-industrial complex” (MIC) construes the relationship between a nation’s military and its defense industry. They define together the vested interest that creates the public policy.
If we think in philosophical terms of logic and mathematics, we can see the existence of “Lobbies” as the necessary condition, then the military-industrial complex is the sufficient condition; they both should exist so that the United States supports Israel unconditionally. The Israel Lobby provides the condition that must be present for the military and the defense-minded corporations to work with the politicians and bureaucratic apparatuses to sell all those 2,000-ton bombs to Israel to drop on the Gazan people. The military alone cannot provide the sufficient condition(s) to produce the “desired effect.” You need an industry that would sell the “desired effect” to society. Of all the people, comedian and podcaster Jimmy Dore brought up that touchy subject of the “military-industrial complex” that professor Huntington had led us to decipher almost 40 years ago.
Look: when you look at the industry side of military issues, you need to see the big picture. You need to know that your 401(k) likely includes military weapons holdings. There is no such thing as a bomb-free pension plan anywhere in the “Free World.” After 10 years of decline in global arms sales, now thanks to Zionism and its intended genocide in Gaza, which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his defense and finance ministers hope will eventually kill off all Palestinians and make Israel an indeed Jewish-only state, the U.S. has increased its market share almost 53%.
Suppose the Biden administration gave $18 billion to Netanyahu and his cabal. In that case, it will return as profit from war not only in the U.S. but also all over the EU countries. The Dutch, German, French and all others pour money into their (and U.S.) defense industries. “Defense stocks are skyrocketing lately!” hawks the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal. Would you like to know the “6 best defense stocks?” Just Google it, and you’ll see tens of pension industry newsletters to help you.
“A driving factor behind the relationship between the military and the defense-minded corporations is that both sides benefit – one side from obtaining weapons, and the other from being paid to supply them.” That is the power behind the Israel Lobby, the military-industrial complex, the expression after a warning of the relationship's fatal effects in his farewell address by U.S. President Eisenhower in 1961.
It is unpleasant to see the ugly face of the military-industrial complex, and it is always there. It is more complex than you might think.
