Kim talks to Patrick Deer about the Military Industrial Complex, a term used by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a 1961 speech to describe a permanent war economy, and the political, economic, and cultural matrix that sustains it. References are made to James Ledbetter’s book Unwarranted Influence and Seymour Melman’s book The Permanent War Economy.
Patrick Deer is Associate Professor at the Department of English, New York University. He focuses on war culture and war literature, modernism, and contemporary British and American literature and culture, and Anglophone literature and human rights. His book Culture in Camouflage explores the emergence of modern war culture in the first half of the 20th century.
Image: Scene from the film Doctor Strangelove
Music used in promotional material: “Grim Desert Aftermath” by Kevin Bryce.
“Military-industrial complex” is an expression that is used to describe the relationship between the military and the industry of defense that supplies it. The military-industrial complex benefits both the “military” side and the “industrial” side. The former receives equipment necessary for war, while the latter receives multi-million, sometimes even multi-billion dollar deals.