Between 1776 and 2023, the United States had launched military inventions in countries around the world at least 393 times, according to the Military Intervention Project of the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University. In the post-Cold War era alone, that number sat at 114 interventions.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump ran on a much-repeated promise to end wars abroad. Since returning to office last year, though, his second administration has entangled the US in a slate of conflicts on several continents: launching a joint war with Israel on Iran, carrying out a spate of deadly airstrikes across Africa, and attacking boats in Caribbean and Eastern Pacific waters.
Meanwhile, military companies and weapons manufacturers have cashed in on the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy. In March, six of the country’s top weapons manufacturers reportedly answered Trump’s call to quadruple what the president termed “Exquisite Class Weaponry.”
During his farewell address 65 years ago, then President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans that the US “must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex.”
That warning has largely gone unheeded across the last six and a half decades. This year, Congress gave the green light for a $1 trillion military budget, and Trump is now pushing to raise that already immense sum to $1.5 trillion.
Still, the role of the military industrial complex, the defense contractors that exist and profit at the heart of it, and how they conduct business with the Pentagon are all part of a relationship that is often confusing and murky. That’s why Inkstick has put together a list of five essential books for understanding the military industrial complex.
The Missile Next Door by Gretchen Heefner
In The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland (2012), Heefner takes a hard look at how the US Air Force concealed the immense dangers of the Cold War-era arms race from farmers and rural Americans in the Great Plains by (initially clandestinely) burying nuclear weapons in their communities.
Cold War Dixie by Kari Frederickson
In Cold War Dixie: Militarization and Modernization in the American South (2013), Kari Frederickson similarly looks at the Cold War-era militarization drive and its particular impact across the American South. While the advent of military industrial sites like the Savannah River Plant nuclear facility created economic opportunities, it also had immense social consequences, including stalling racial progress.
Nylon and Bombs by Pap A. Ndiaye
In Nylon and Bombs: DuPont and the March of Modern America (2007), historian Ndiaye, who currently serves as France’s Ambassador to the Council of Europe, threads together the link between chemical giant DuPont de Nemours’s pioneering of both nylon and plutonium. The book seamlessly weaves the relationship between consumerism and the rise of the military industrial complex.
The Imagineers of War by Sharon Weinberger
In The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World (2017), Weinberger traces the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency across the decades since its founding in 1958. In examining DARPA, a Pentagon agency, Weinberger lays out the agency’s role in everything from the creation of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war to the advent of attack drones.
Kill Chain by Andrew Cockburn
In Kill Chain: Drones and the Rise of High-Tech Assassins (2015), journalist Cockburn explores the US government’s use of drones in war and reveals the troubling ethical history behind this lethal technology. He deftly moves between the human cost of drone warfare, the CIA, and the highly profitable drone industry that has meant multibillion dollar contracts for companies in the military industry.
Visit Inkstick’s Bookshop.org page to see all the books we’ve reviewed and recommended.
