by Prof. Peter Dale Scott
August 11, 2009
Global Research
“In the councils of government, we must guard against
the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced
power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for
granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing
of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful
methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” Dwight
David Eisenhower, “Military-Industrial Complex Speech,” 1961,1
“My observation is that the impact of national elections
on the business climate for SAIC has been minimal. The emphasis on where federal
spending occurs usually shifts, but total federal spending never decreases.
SAIC has always continued to grow despite changes in the political leadership
in Washington.” Former SAIC manager, quoted in Donald L. Barlett
and James B. Steele, “Washington’s $8 Billion Shadow.” Vanity Fair, March
20072
“We make American military doctrine” Ed Soyster,
MPRI3
The Myth of the Grand Chessboard: Geopolitics and Imperial
Folie de Grandeur
In The Road to 9/11 I summarized the dialectic
of open societies: how from their energy they expand, leading to a higher level
of more secretive corporations and agencies, which eventually weaken the home
country through needless and crushing wars.4 I am not alone in seeing America
in the final stages of this process, which since the Renaissance has brought
down Spain, the Netherlands, and Great Britain.
Much of what I wrote summarized the thoughts of writers before
me like Paul Kennedy and Kevin Phillips. But there is one aspect of the curse
of expansion that I underemphasized: how dominance creates megalomanic illusions
of insuperable control, and how this illusion in turn is crystallized into a
prevailing ideology of dominance. I am surprised that so few, heretofore, have
pointed out that from a public point of view these ideologies are delusional,
indeed perhaps insane. In this essay I will argue however that what looks demented
from a public viewpoint makes sense from the narrower perspective of those profiting
from the provision of private entrepreneurial violence and intelligence.
