JERUSALEM STRATEGIC TRIBUNE
Where is the Military-Industrial Complex Now That We Really Need It?
Michael Mandelbaum
May 2025

…The term “military-industrial complex” entered the American political lexicon as a danger, as Eisenhower intended, but also, to some, as an established fact of American public life that led to self-perpetuating and unduly high expenditures on defense. The end of the Cold War demonstrated that a permanent and powerful military-industrial complex did not, in fact, exist. The share of US gross domestic product devoted to defense fell by half, from six percent in the 1980s to three percent in the late 1990s. In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States faced no aggressive, well-armed adversary and thus had no need of a defense establishment of Cold-War dimensions. Now, however, it does. READ MORE