Institutional Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex
With few exceptions the existing literature on the military-industrial complex (MIC) dates its origins no earlier than World War II. Most analysts have taken President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address and the Cold War setting of Eisenhower's presidency as the starting point for conceptualizing the MIC. The common theme of previous studies has been the acceptance of C. Wright Mills's power elite model as a frame of reference. Linked to this vision of modem society is the conventional definition of the MIC as an informal coalition of groups with vested interests in high levels of defense spending. From this common ground the literature has taken two analytical directions. In one direction it has been the trend of policy-the unprecedented levels of peacetime defense spending and an increasing militarization of foreign policy-that has been the object of study, the MIC serving primarily as a convenient label for a critique of these Cold War policy trends and the altered power configurations and policymaking processes that have produced them. Within this analytical direction the debate in the literature has been over which segment of the MIC (the military, business, or political elite) is the driving force. The second analytical direction has been a focus on the bureaucratic forms that are a counterpart to the coalition of interest groups.' The two analytical