Wrestling the Military-Academic Complex

Since 1961, thanks to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, we've all been cognizant of the "unwarranted influence" of the military-industrial complex in America. Later in that decade, Senator J. William Fulbright spoke out against the militarization of academia, warning that, "in lending itself too much to the purposes of government, a university fails its higher purposes," and called attention to the existence of what he termed the military-industrial-academic complex or what historian Stuart W. Leslie has termed the "golden triangle" of "military agencies, the high technology industry, and research universities."

While we might intuitively accept the existence of a military-academic complex in America, defining and understanding it has never been simple -- both because of its ambiguous nature and its dual character. In actuality, the military-academic complex has two distinct arms. The first is the official, out-and-proud, but oft ignored, melding of the military and academia. Since 1802, when Thomas Jefferson signed legislation establishing the United States Military Academy, America has been formally melding higher education and the art of warfare. The second is the militarized civilian university -- since World War II and the emergence of the national security state, civilian educational institutions have increasingly become engaged in the pursuit of enhanced war-making abilities.

In 1958, the Department of Defense spent an already impressive $91 million in support of "academic research." By 1964, the sum had reached $258 million and by 1970, in the midst of the Vietnam War, $266 million. By 2003, however, any of these numbers, or even their $615 million total, was dwarfed by the Pentagon's prime contract awards to just two schools, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University that, together, raked in a combined total of $842,437,294.

War-Making U or U Make War?

West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy. The mere mention brings to mind a vision of dashing, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, straight-laced cadets in sharp uniforms (or perhaps the shadowy specter of rampant sexual harassment and rape), but if, when it comes to military education, you're only considering the big-3 service academies with the Merchant Marine Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, and private schools like The Citadel thrown in for good measure, think again!

As it turns out, the military and the Department of Defense (DoD) have an entire system of education and training institutions and organizations of their own, including the many schools of the National Defense University system (NDU): the National War College, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, the School for National Security Executive Education, the Joint Forces Staff College, and the Information Resources Management College as well as the Defense Acquisition University, the Joint Military Intelligence College -- open only to "U.S. citizens in the armed forces and in federal civilian service who hold top secret/SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) clearances" -- the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, the Naval Postgraduate School, the Naval War College, Air University, the Air Force Institute of Technology, the Marine Corps University and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, among others. In fact, scholar Chalmers Johnson has noted in his new book on American militarism, The Sorrows of Empire, that there are approximately 150 military-educational institutions in the U.S.

While the service academies train a youthful corps of tomorrow's military officers, enrolled in the schools of the National Defense University are a group of selected commissioned officers, with approximately 20 years of service, and civilian officials from various agencies, including the Department of Defense, who are schooled in a curriculum that emphasizes "the development and implementation of national security strategy and military strategy, mobilization, acquisition, management of resources, information and information technology for national security, and planning for joint and combined operations." Further, good old NDU sustains the golden-triangle military agencies, the high technology industry and research universities by "promot[ing] understanding and teamwork among the Armed Forces and between those agencies of the Government and industry that contribute to national security." To this end, the school also opens spots to "industry fellows" from the private sector who, says NDU president and Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael M. Dunn, "bring ideas from industry to the Defense Department."