At this point, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address needs no introduction. The thirty-sixth president’s warning about the “acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” has been cited so often that its insights verge on the cliché. Unfortunately, Eisenhower’s speech is even more relevant today than it was sixty years ago. At no other point in history has the national security state and its partners in the defense industry wielded more influence over U.S. foreign policy.

A few paragraphs into his address, Eisenhower says the following:

“We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.”

It’s difficult to imagine a president, let alone one with a military background, calling a war a holocaust. Yet Eisenhower recognized the human cost of armed conflict in a way that few of his successors ever did. In the eighty years since its conclusion, World War II has been celebrated in a way that no other war has. Hindsight has blunted its severity and made it seem like a relatively bloodless endeavor, even though the most conservative estimates place its death toll at thirty-five million. Eisenhower’s use of the word “holocaust” foregrounds the fact that war, even when waged for righteous purposes, betrays the sanctity of human life.

At the same time, his emphasis on “the interests of world peace and human betterment” undercuts the neoconservative argument for a bloated defense budget. According to Eisenhower, a strong military should be used to chart a course towards peace and prosperity. It is not an expensive apparatus to be used at will and without reservation. In his own words:

“Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research. These and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.”

Eisenhower seems to anticipate the utopianism that would undergird the neoconservative movement. Here, he recognizes the dangers associated with idealism, especially when such idealism is marshaled towards allocating more power to the state. In doing so, he seems to echo what H.L. Mencken said years earlier, “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”

Of course, the most famous excerpt from Eisenhower’s speech is his warning about the military-industrial complex:

“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State [sic] corporations.

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.”

The Cold War initiated the creation of a permanent armaments industry, one which was incentivized to ensure a constant demand for its deadly products. It also expedited the establishment and entrenchment of the permanent national security state. Ironically enough, it was the Eisenhower administration, staffed by such figures as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother CIA Director Allen Dulles, that contributed most directly to ratification of that apparatus, as well as its ability to arrogate unprecedented amounts of power and influence.

In 1953, Eisenhower signed off on Operation Ajax, the inaugural CIA coup, in which American intelligence worked in tandem with the British MI6 to remove Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Mosaddegh, a staunch anti-communist, had sought to nationalize the Iranian oil industry, jeopardizing the fortunes of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The following year, Eisenhower, acting at the behest of the United Fruit Company, ordered the CIA to remove Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz from power. Árbenz had threatened to seize United Fruit’s land holdings in Guatemala, endangering America’s economic foothold in the country. Eisenhower also laid the groundwork for the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion, which was carried out by John F. Kennedy in 1961. It should come as no surprise that he was adamant about the dangers posed by the military-industrial complex; he oversaw much of its creation.

Eisenhower also takes aim at the “scientific-technological elite”:

“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of the federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard, there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system—ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”

Here, Eisenhower foreshadows our technocratic present. His description readily applies to many elements of contemporary society: the unholy union of government, commerce, and academia; the deference afforded to members of the scientific elite, like Anthony Fauci; the influence of the pharmaceutical industry; the ubiquity of the university system and its politically correct code of etiquette; the inescapable reach of the surveillance state; the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence; the rise of the intelligentsia; and the political influence of oligarchs like George Soros, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos. There’s no evidence that Eisenhower ever read Brave New World, but his reflections here can best be characterized as Huxleyan.

He continues:

“Down the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.”

Once again, it’s difficult to imagine a contemporary U.S. president making a statement this forthright about the evils of war and the imperatives of nuclear disarmament. Fifteen years removed from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Eisenhower recognized the emergence of a new world order, one which seemed destined to lead to nuclear annihilation. As a result, he stresses the importance of diplomacy, framing mutual respect as the lone impediment to mutual destruction. Today’s leaders would do well to heed Eisenhower’s example and recognize that it takes courage to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip or negotiate a resolution to the war in Ukraine.

Eisenhower concludes with the following:

“We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”

In 2025, Eisenhower’s dream feels even less attainable than it did when he left office. Nevertheless, we persist.