What is the military industrial complex? Discuss two of its important features and explain how it relates to C. Wright Mills' concept of the "military definition of reality."

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The military industrial complex is the collection of relationships among government forces, the Pentagon, and defense contractors that promote the acquisition of weapons systems and a militarized foreign policy.
Sociologically, the military-industrial complex contains a series of distinct features. These include a strong compatibility of interest among top Pentagon officials, defense contractors, and members of Congress (a series of ties that has also been called the "iron triangle." Their relationships result in the production and purchase of expensive weapons systems that are often unneeded or underperform (Hartung, 2011). The system is guided by self-interest rather than policy. For example, the military continues to invest in the acquisition of large tanks, a method of conducting war that is largely obsolete. Members of Congress often support weapons procurement programs that benefit their districts, regardless of whether they contribute to national security. Even liberals, generally doves with respect to war policy, vote to retain military bases that are no longer useful, or armaments the military itself may oppose, in order to benefit their local constituency. Counterinsurgency capabilities such as language skills, intelligence gathering, and social science-based cultural knowledge including the Human Terrain Teams described in the opening vignette do appear in the Department of Defense budget, but they receive less support than expensive heavy-weapons hardware.
Ideology plays an important role in the military-industrial complex, especially a view of the world that C. Wright Mills called the "military definition of reality" (1956). According to Mills, most civilian and military leaders saw the world as an unsettled, competitive, often hostile arena in which military prowess was the best means to secure U.S. interests and its status as the most powerful nation in the world. According to the Constitution and formal regulations, U.S. civilians may control the military. But they share the military mindset regarding the importance of projecting power, ensuring that nonmilitary options such as diplomacy receive less attention and lower policy priorities. Military leaders and their values can thus play a significant role in Washington's policies, not conspiring against civilians, but working alongside and often supported by them.