The "Military-Industrial Complex" at Fifty

We mentioned here earlier that the Spring 2011 number of Enterprise & Society was a special issue offering new perspectives on "the military-industrial complex." The occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower's speech of January 17, 1961, in which he used the phrase, has occasioned a number of publications and commentaries. The speech itself is available as a video here and as a transcript here. The National Archives also has a video discussing the writing of the speech. The Eisenhower Institute held a commemorative event, which can be seen on video.
   Two recent journalistic treatments of the subject have also recently appeared: William Hartung, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2010) and James Ledbetter, Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Yale University Press, 2011). The books were jointly reviewed in the Wall Street Journal and in The Statesman; the two authors participated in a conference at the New School, "The Military-Industrial Complex Revisited: Eisenhower's Warning at 50," which can be viewed as a video. Hartung can be seen discussing his book in an interview by Book TV; Ledbetter can be heard on a "Marketplace" radio interview.