Originally published on www.denverlibertarian.com
The War State:
The Cold War Origins Of The Military-Industrial Complex And The Power Elite, 1945-1963
By Michael Swanson
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Not too long ago, a deluge of hysteria surrounded President Trump amid his threat to declare a national emergency in order to secure funding for a border wall. Alas, those simpler times of alleged fascism have come and gone and a new hyper hysteria has reared its head via the global outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. All bets are off now with executive orders and emergency declarations being handed out almost daily, the most egregious of these being the invoking of the Defense Production Act and forcing a private company to manufacture ventilators or the deployment of Federal troops to quell riots in Portland. This is far closer to fascism than any other previous actions, cloaked in the usual propaganda of being out of absolute necessity for the preservation of the “good of the people.” If nothing else, perhaps these executive actions might have many questioning the powers vested in the Executive Office, but the use of emergency declarations based on dubious claims of necessity and fear is nothing new.
It has been de rigueur for Presidents to establish new executive powers under the guise of national security for well over a century. Many point the finger at an out of control Executive Branch, surely this is the most visible and relatable, Orange Man Bad and all, but more correctly, it should be pointed at the Continuous Government, an unaccountable beast lying just under the surface. Although it operates behind the scenes, it typically manifests itself most visually through the ugly business of war. This Continuous Government of War, or more simply put, the War State, is enabled to exist through an unelected bureaucracy which stays firmly in place from administration to administration and is the apotheosis of government colluding with businesses and cartelizing markets.
Although the rise of the War State enabled a massive expansion of the executive branch, in one of those strange quarks of history, it would also be its downfall. Inevitably, the War State consumed and all but eliminated any true powers of the President. Enter the vapid figurehead as Leader, who offers nothing more than slogans and empty promises that have no bearing on the actual day to day operations of the Continuous Government. Despite this, many still manage to hang on to every vacuous phrase and will argue vehemently for their guy to take back the reins and straighten things out for the better.
In The War State, author Michael Swanson addresses an ever expanding question, a wormhole that opens up many avenues for investigation and exploration. That question, simple as it may be, is this: given that, “the federal government gave birth to large military budgets and mass income taxes at the same time and both live on together today as twin siblings of the war state, does this big-money spending lead to corruption?” (p15) To find out, Swanson takes the reader on a whirlwind journey, one where expert opinion moulders attempted to convince big business and the American public to align with government and to foster a confident belief in its ability to execute any plan, if only given the necessary funding (voluntary or otherwise), time and requisite secrecy. With a belly full of propaganda, the masses were willing to believe in the War State’s necessity and indeed, became willing participants in the process of embedding the very bureaucracy that would forever exclude them from any preconceived notion of participation in the democratic process that they held so dearly. Bloated budgets became the norm and black operations became business as usual and all the while well connected businessmen lined their pockets without risk.
The War State thrives in times of fear and paranoia and to speak out against it is tantamount to treason, for this must mean that you are anti-American and that you want Americans to lose their manufacturing jobs or even worse, lose their life fighting for your freedoms! The War State is a deep-seated entity well over one hundred years in the making and at the most basic level, it is a crony capitalist venture, fascist at its core, with the average citizen being merely a pawn on the global chessboard. The War State is deeply embedded in the American psyche and there is no easy way out. The multifarious ill effects of its existence will be ever reverberating for centuries to come. But fear not! There is a silver lining, the War State enabled a situation that gave rise, as it were, to the miniskirt. Hooray?
Like an ever-expanding CIA operation, over the course of several iterations, this summary has ballooned into a massive article branching off in myriad directions with one topic spinning off into another. Much as that vaunted piece of paper known as the Constitution has failed to reign in the War State, I have failed to reign in this article to a reasonable length. As such, I will present it in a serialized and more easily digestible format.
Part One:
- The Pretense of Knowledge and Belief in Necessity
Part Two:
- Funding Big Business - the Buildup
- Feeding the People and Sending them off to Slaughter
Part Three:
- NSC-68, Propaganda and Bureaucracy
- New Enemies, Real and Imagined
- CIA and Less than Powerful Pieces of Paper
- The Permanent Government
Part One:
The Pretense of Knowledge and Belief in Necessity
The State, despite its claim of being for the people, exists solely to feed itself and to obtain more power. It works the same under any form of government, be it Communism or Representative Democracy, both will feed the population with lies to prop up the belief in its necessity. Indeed, the common view held by the U.S. population is that the War State was an entity that grew out of necessity to handle a threat, one that could only be handled by an omnipotent military-security apparatus to plan, direct and navigate an increasingly complex world of international geopolitical tensions. Swanson casts aside this narrative in lieu of an interpretation focusing on the alliance with, and cartelization of, big business, manufacturing, government and perhaps most importantly, the opinion-molding military experts, who have ushered in an era of American exceptionalism, where destabilization and regime change has become the norm, inherently making the world less safe for the democracy that they proclaim to be tantamount to all other objectives. These so-called experts were able to convince not only an entire generation of independent minded civilians of the necessity of The War State’s existence, but they were able to convince a majority of supposedly infallible top government officials of its necessity as well. This alliance of business and government was a natural progression of the cartelization that became common throughout the Progressive Era, most explicitly evidenced by the railroad, petroleum, iron and steel, and sugar industries. And lest we forget, the granddaddy of all monopolies, the government education system, as emphasized by historian Thaddeus Russell on this recent podcast.
As with all things history, where does one start? Although the book’s subtitle indicates the Cold War origins of the Military-Industrial Complex, I contend that there are origins to be explored going back to the turn of the century in order to analyze some of the societal conditions that paved the way for a deference to authority that the War State required. Beginning in the Progressive Era and extending into the interwar period, a foundation was laid by a puritanical group of people who professed to have the ability to organize society in a manner far better than if people were left to their own devices; a self-proclaimed pretense of knowledge. According to the standard narrative, the Progressive Era is broadly defined thusly: it was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States that spanned the 1890s to the 1920s. The main objectives of the Progressive movement were addressing problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption. Seems harmless enough, right? But more specifically, this was a movement of the intelligent class, who were educated at elite universities and who took it upon themselves to be the moral guardians guiding the unassimilated immigrants as to how they should think and act, and encouraging them to cast aside their individualistic predilections and assimilate into the greater culture. It is true enough that the Progressive Movement was a response to the massive flood of immigrants to the U.S. during the 1880s to the 1920’s, wherein the population roughly doubled with Irish, Jewish, Italian, Slavic and German immigrants (among others) arriving on the shores. Naturally, they all brought with them their extended families and their individual cultures. The Progressives sought to change this via a process of assimilation and this is a foundational moment for the War State (more on this in a bit). A fusillade of approaches was used to enforce and achieve the Progressive worldview; the proper view. This can be evidenced most noticeably through the myriad settlement houses, as defined by historian Thaddeus Russell on this podcast, that were created to teach the immigrants how to speak English, how to work in a factory (for the men), how to be a housewife (for the women), how to dress properly and generally taught them the good and proper customs that were required to be a part of society, by their Progressive standards, of course. Beyond these literal assimilation factories, other means to achieve their goals included the war on opiates (a precursor of the modern drug war), the elimination of religious schools in lieu of secular English speaking government schools and the lobbying for, and enactment of, alcohol prohibition laws enforced by government guns.
What does this all have to do with the War State?
For any ruling entity, it is of necessity to prevent the citizenry from being individualistic. It is of necessity to modify the habits of the immigrants from the old world such that they abandon their cultural roots and fall in line with the rest of good society. A ruling entity needs a common identity to enforce an us-versus-them mentality. It needs to eliminate the mind that would rather think of sex or jazz. It needs to glorify going to work every day and to not be drunk all the time. It is of necessity to have a good and productive, yet docile citizenry, for a distracted and wandering mind does not bode well in a factory, and a factory, naturally, needs dedicated workers to build weapons of war. That is the importance of the Progressive Era. That is the cultural foundation of the War State.
On top of all the moral postulating and cultural genociding of the Progressive Era, there was a massive layer of government propaganda urging the masses to support a war that they largely opposed. Indeed, a song from 1915 titled, “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to be a Soldier,” was wildly popular among isolationists, socialists, pacifists, many Protestant ministers, German Americans and Irish Americans. The song begins as follows:
This type of sentiment, of course, did not sit well with the ruling class. Interventionists and militarists like former President Theodore Roosevelt beat the drums for war preparedness and although President Woodrow Wilson ran on a platform of, “He Kept us Out of War,” once he was elected he didn’t hesitate to send the boys off to slaughter. And what of the song? In responding to the song’s popularity, Roosevelt indicated that he was not a fan and he suggested that the place for women who opposed war was, “in China—or by preference in a harem—and not in the United States.” If you don’t fall in line with our worldview, then you must be excommunicated and forced to live a horrible life against your will. Nice guy.
Although the concept of government propaganda was not new, with the advent of the moving picture, radio shows and the influence of increasingly consolidating news services, the conditions were ripe for a pro-government media barrage, delivered in unison and with an air of authority in order to sway the masses to support government programs and ultimately, war. This trio of media, coupled with the government propaganda machine, made up another sinister aspect of the Progressive Era: The Monopoly of Information. Indeed, a willing extension of the government propaganda machine in the WW1 era were some, but certainly not all, Hollywood stars who were eager to not only produce moving pictures in support of the war effort, but charismatically stood in front of their fellow citizens and promoted the buying of war bonds, as did Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford.
To gather some additional context on this Monopoly of Information and how it was deployed upon the masses in the United States, one must first take a slight detour to the other side of the pond. In Britain, throughout WWI, a massive propaganda campaign was employed to bolster public support for a largely unpopular war. Back then, the British propaganda machine constructed outlandish stories that were so brazenly false, that many grew weary of the propaganda, especially in the interwar period. As recounted in this Guardian article, "Britons discovered that there was no substance to most of the more lurid atrocity stories – about crucified soldiers, raped nuns, dismembered babies and notoriously, about the German factory [that rendered] corpses into fat.” The parallels to modern day claims of WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction) or Iraqi soldiers tossing incubator babies to the ground are striking. Patently false in retrospect, they were effective in the short term to achieve their propagandistic goals.
In the run up to WWII, the U.S. government, in realizing the follies of the outlandish British propaganda machine during WW1, had to be a little more tactful so as to alleviate any doubtful public scrutiny. Trust was established through the creation of numerous new agencies and programs throughout the Great Depression. These programs included infrastructure projects, but also cultural projects including art, music and writing. These programs served to solidify a faith in government taking care of the people (with an underlying intent of assimilation to promote a common culture) and by far, one of the most effective projects was President Roosevelt’s intimate radio broadcast fireside chats. Of course, this was not unique to the U.S., for a similar thing was occurring in Germany, as conveyed in the aforementioned Guardian article, “Hitler communicated with hypnotic directness through the new media of radio and cinema. Hitler could never have won widespread support if he had not been able to exploit the multiple miseries of the Depression. After 1929, Germans were receptive to his assertion that their sufferings were the evil fruits of the rotten Weimar system.” Sound familiar? Economic depression? Government will save you. Evil people out to get you? Government will save you.
While the U.S. population was distracted and riding high throughout the Roaring Twenties, the Monopoly of Information services were hard at work burying and downplaying the atrocities occurring in the Soviet Union. As conveyed in this Reason article, in reference to two terrible occurrences of this era, “One is Stalin's deliberate infliction of a famine on the peasants of the Ukraine that killed between four million and seven million of them. The other is how Western journalists, particularly those of The New York Times, deliberately covered up the mass murder.” Indeed, as conveyed in this article regarding the Times’ covering up of atrocities, "Stalin suborned western journalists such as Walter Duranty, who famously wrote of the Ukraine famine in the New York Times: ‘There is no actual starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.’” Well, the Times reported it, I guess we’re in the clear! And if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s more. Not content with merely burying stories of famine, the Times downplayed the existence of the horrific political show trials in the Soviet Union and conveyed them as a fair process back in the U.S. These show trials forced many false confessions under threat of imprisonment or death, based on the most flimsy or falsified evidence or even coerced testimony by relatives or friends. These show trials were used by Stalin to purge any dissenters and allowed him to gain absolute control of the government. Seems like a good thing to support?
Perhaps the interwar era is summed up best by this passage in the previously referenced Guardian article regarding propaganda measures, "Where it did not convince, it confused. It muddied the wells of knowledge and polluted the sources of understanding. It sanctioned the suspension of belief and disbelief. Propaganda helped to make the 1930s an age of obfuscation, of darkness at noon.” Given this situation, who will save you? Who could sort all of this out? With the myriad Monopoly of Information entities and Progressive elites eschewing morality and alleged knowledge, what chance could one have? Consider too, that many newly landed immigrants from Germany, Ireland and countless other locations, were tacitly forced into broadly supporting the wars and other pro-government measures, lest they give the existing U.S. population any additional fodder with which to persecute them based solely on their country of origin (for more on that, see this article on the plight of the Volga Germans). The stage was set for the War State to inherit from its inception the societal framework of deference to political authority.
On the next installment I will dive into the grittier side of the roots of the entangled alliances of business, government and taxes by delving into some of the core sections from the book.
Part two:
- Funding Big Business - the Buildup
- Feeding the People and Sending them off to Slaughter
Stay tuned!