The US Military-Industrial Complex and National Strategy

Abstract

The overall national strategy and security goals of a nation should provide the framework and explanation for the size and composition of its armed forces and the defence budget that supports them. American military forces and budgets, however, are often planned, developed and debated as if they bore little relationship to strategy. Instead, they emerge from a system of defence policy-making and acquisition sometimes described as a ‘military industrial complex’ or ‘iron triangle’.1 Through the institutions and processes of this complex, the domestic interests involved in the formulation of national security policy can distort, even negate the nation’s strategy.KeywordsNational StrategyMilitary ForceForce StructureDomestic PoliticsDefence SpendingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.