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The “Military-Industrial Complex,” JFK’s Foreign Policy & the Joint Chiefs of Staff
He may have been President of the United States, but John F. Kennedy was at war with his own national security structure.
On July 20, 1961, President Kennedy stormed out of a formal meeting of the National Security Council because he was thoroughly disgusted at the fact that he had just been seriously requested to approve a plan for a surprise nuclear attack against the Soviet Union; a plan that was presented “as though it were for a kindergarten class” by General Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA.539
Kennedy told his Secretary of State about the incident and then said bitterly:
And we call ourselves the human race.540
So it’s no secret that JFK was having huge trouble with his own people in Washington—especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff.541 Those difficulties were extreme and were related to what they perceived as his “too soft” position on communism and his foreign policy overall, as well as his attempts to avoid military interventions that the Joint Chiefs saw as necessary and desirable.
It is very well-documented that JFK not only intended on withdrawing troops from Vietnam, but also on sharply reducing the nuclear threat by going full steam ahead on a nuclear test ban treaty, to be followed by serious negotiations on arms reduction between all the world’s nuclear powers—and accompanied by serious efforts of détente with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the entire Eastern Bloc.542
These efforts made JFK about as unpopular with the CIA and the Joint Chiefs as a fox in a chicken coop. They hated his guts, openly and intensely. They also opposed his efforts in every way possible to them, including disobeying specific Presidential directives to cease and desist in all covert actions against Cuba. It didn’t stop them; they conducted their raids and black ops anyway, and just failed to notify the President about it.543 It was a war right here at home in Washington.
President Eisenhower, who preceded Kennedy in office, apparently saw the whole thing coming. His farewell address to the nation contained a specific warning that few understood at the time but which now, in retrospect, seems uncanny and very eerie. These were his exact words:
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
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.544
Those were strangely direct and harshly chosen words for an outgoing President of the United States.
The clash between those forces—an outgoing President’s warning of the imminent dangers and increasing powers of a “Military-Industrial Complex”; versus the traditional principles of our Republic embodied in the Democratic principles of diplomacy and negotiation—quite clearly came to the flash point of confrontation during Kennedy’s presidency.
539 Talbot, Brothers, 68—69.
540 Talbot, Brothers, 69.
541 Talbot, Brothers.
542 James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died and why it matters (Touchstone: 2010); Talbot, Brothers.
543 Ibid.
544 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Address,” January 17, 1961: pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/eisenhower-farewell/