Dual-use warfare: The military-industrial complex is out in the open now
Amid brazen displays of firepower, warfare has economic incentives that are no longer hidden and don’t seem to make the arms industry and its political backers squirm. What Eisenhower warned of is the world’s reality today.
The United States, the very country whose former president and war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower first warned against the rise of a “military-industrial complex," has since become its most active architect, user and beneficiary.
This complex has matured into a diffused but dominant global operating system. Its power is not exercised through the use of combat aircraft and missiles alone, but through procurement cycles, legislative influence, job guarantees and an expanding web of strategic dependencies that now tie national security to economic continuity.
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In West Asia, US strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure mark a dramatic escalation, with American forces joining what had been a bilateral Iran-Israel conflict. The US has entered a volatile theatre at a moment when restraint might have offered it greater leverage. The move could widen the conflict zone and deepen Washington’s entanglement in a dynamic where deterrence, diplomacy and industrial interests have become indistinguishable.
The US made a spectacular display in Iran of its most advanced bombers and bunker buster bombs, but Iran’s response of missiles fired at Israel would suggest that Israeli demand for interceptor ammunition to defend itself is unlikely to flag. Costly hostilities mean that this is not only about geopolitics, but economics, with the US ready to keep its key ally in West Asia well supplied with military hardware.
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American action over the weekend underscores the dual imperatives that shape power today: the projection of strength abroad and preservation of influence at home. Each military provocation feeds a feedback loop that rarely ends in resolution. Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz and target US assets in the region is alarming but unsurprising. Any aggression displayed by Tehran triggers a chain of responses: from security alerts and military deployments to insurance recalibrations and, ultimately, arms-replenishment contracts. In such a cycle, while conflict may not be deemed desirable for its own sake, its economic value is obvious.
The US has long used military force not only to pursue security objectives, but also to safeguard its access to resources such as oil, gas and rare minerals. From the first Gulf War to interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, US military engagements and regime change pursuits have reinforced a domestic defence sector that contributes directly to GDP, sustains high-value employment and drives technological advances. Far from being scaled back after the Cold War ended, America’s military-industrial capacity has been kept in top condition. This assures the US supremacy in any armed conflict as well as leadership of the geopolitically controlled market for armaments.
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The Iran war provides a fresh opportunity to recast economic vulnerabilities as strategic necessities. At home, the US could soon reframe its vast debt pile and fiscal fragility as a burden imposed by its responsibility to keep the world safe. That others must ‘pay’ for security is a theme that Washington has been harping on. Enhanced defence budgets among its allies, of course, would serve American arms producers well.
The military-industrial complex is no longer a Western monopoly. Its logic has been embraced by other powers. In China, defence manufacturing serves both as a technological frontier and employment engine. In Israel, defence innovation underwrites global exports. For Iran, asymmetric warfare enables regime resilience and circumvents international isolation. So long as the normalization of long-term hostility serves industrial interests, big or small, arms-makers have no incentive to let stability take hold.
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Today’s global scramble for rare earths mirrors the 20th century’s oil rush, but with digital dominance as an underlying motive.
Iran is rapidly emerging as a significant global player in the field of strategic minerals. In April, it commissioned its first monazite-based rare-earth pilot plant in Abbas Abad, capable of processing 17 rare earth elements with domestic technology. The country is estimated to hold about 85 million tonnes of rare-earth reserves. It reportedly has vast deposits of lithium, cobalt, copper and bauxite. Preliminary exploration suggests Iran may host the world’s second-largest lithium field and one of West Asia’s largest porphyry copper reserves. These resources are vital to consumer electronics, defence systems and clean-tech initiatives. Their strategic value places Iran’s mineral wealth at the centre of geopolitical contention.
In this context, the language of peace often sounds performative. Institutions like the United Nations are structurally locked out. This may remain the case so long as the economics of deterrence outweighs the ethics of diplomacy.
At times, military action also has domestic political utility. The optics of a victory can eclipse economic anxiety, while strategic assertion tends to find more public support than strategic restraint. This yields the absurdity of aggression cloaked in words of diplomacy and peace. That Pakistan, long accused of abetting terrorism, would nominate US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize reveals the performative farce all this has become.
The military-industrial complex no longer hides in the shadows. It is embedded in legislation, budgets and political game plans. In the business of war, peace isn’t just inconvenient, it’s a threat.
The author is a corporate advisor and author of ‘Family and Dhanda’.
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