The Military-Industrial Complex Doesn’t Run Washington

Something else does

A little while ago I found myself interested to read a frustrated Glenn Greenwald argue that, given the context of the “enormous” $858 billion U.S. defense budget recently passed by Congress along with an additional $44 billion in military aid for Ukraine, the only thing anyone can now inevitably rely on from Washington D.C. is that “the U.S. budget for military and intelligence agencies will increase every year no matter what.”

I felt this merited some reflection. Greenwald’s explanation for why perpetual growth of the defense budget is an inevitability (which it basically is), and for why American foreign policy is relentlessly hawkish more broadly, is a popular one: that the American arms manufacturing industry, the military, and our politicians are all engaged in a circle of corruption and collusion to make each other rich. The big defense contractors bribe the politicians with large donations and the generals and other government officials with board seats and other lucrative positions, and they in turn come up with reasons to justify shoveling ever-increasing piles of taxpayer money into buying new weapons from the arms makers. This, Greenwald says, is precisely the “unwarranted influence” of the “military-industrial complex” that President Eisenhower gravely warned our country to guard against in his famous farewell address some 62 years ago.

Eisenhower was, I must point out, attempting to draw attention to an even broader issue, i.e. the rise of an unaccountable technocratic administrative state, which accelerated in the wake of the technological-managerial revolution produced by WWII, and the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” The influence of this transformation of American republican governance, of which a military-industrial complex was but one part, was likely, he predicted, to be “economic, political, even spiritual” in scope, and threaten to change “the very structure of our society.” But I will leave all that aside for the time being, as “military-industrial complex” is the phrase that stuck in public memory, along with the narrower, more common understanding of what Eisenhower was warning about that Greenwald is using in this case.

As described above, this understanding of the military-industrial complex – and a common understanding of how politics in Washington works in general – is essentially conspiratorial. Its primary mechanism is individuals, or groups of individuals, cynically manipulating the procedures of the state to advance their material self-interests. Thus Washington has turned into a “multi-tentacle war machine,” Greenwald says, because “No matter what is going on in the world, they always find – or concoct – reasons why the military budget must grow no matter how inflated it already is.” (Emphasis mine.) 

Let’s call this the Corrupt Conspiracy Model of how Washington functions (or dysfunctions). It is a model that can be powerfully convincing, because it taps into the truth that people really are naturally flawed and self-interested creatures, demonstrably prone to corruption. Applying Lenin’s maxim – “who benefits?” – appears to provide players (the “they”) and the motive. Combine that motive with the means and opportunity produced by systems of collusion, and you seem to have a straightforward explanation for most of the policy that comes out of Washington: it’s all basically a con game led by a pack of greedy psychopaths. As Greenwald notes with some frustration and confusion, this used to be a characteristically left-wing critique of government and corporate power, but following the Great Political Realignment it’s now become common to the disaffected right instead.

Reading his argument made me recall how, back when I was younger and left-leaning, I too believed in this model, at least implicitly. As noted, it can be quite persuasive, even satisfying, in its simplicity. It’s also actually a subtly idealistic and optimistic theory: the American system would work great, just as it was designed to do, if not for all the selfish bad actors taking advantage of the system, etc. The only problem was that, after enough time in Washington, I had no choice but to reevaluate. Because what I found is that the swamp is populated almost wholly not by cynics, but by true believers.

True believers in what? Answering that will require trying to nail down a second, more complex model to explain how people in the Imperial City make decisions – and why it’s still always a good bet to invest in Lockheed Martin.[1]

First, let me qualify by acknowledging that yes, Washington is indeed awash with lobbyists, corrupt politicians, psychopathic executives, cynical operators, and backstabbing climbers. It is a veritable hive of scum and villainy. They just aren’t what really makes the place tick. In fact all of these people conform themselves parasitically to that which does.

The real issue to contend with is that almost no one in Washington actually thinks in the terms of the Corrupt Conspiracy Model. I.e. they don’t think “I will advocate for a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy so that the resulting wars will benefit the arms industry and make me and my friends rich…” – even the people with seats on the boards of defense contractors. The reality is more disturbing than that, honestly.

What runs Washington is a Spirit. Or, alternatively, a Story. Let me try to explain.

There is a useful saying in Washington, which is: “Where you sit is where you stand.” This refers to how individuals’ interests, and even their values, almost inevitably come to be determined by their position within and among bureaucracies. Whatever motivations they may enter with, they soon find themselves defending and advocating for whatever will most benefit the bureaucracy of which they have become a part. It is a relatively common phenomenon for even loyal top-level political appointees, dispatched by a new president to head a particular department or agency specifically so as to bring it into line with the president’s policy goals, to quickly be coopted into acting against that president’s wishes and working to advance their bureaucracy’s self-interests instead. Even those who enter and discover the truth that “the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy,” as Oscar Wilde memorably quipped, find they desire nothing so much as to help it do so. Their own interests and incentives have been subsumed by the bureaucracy’s interests and incentives.

How does this happen? And what is a bureaucracy, really? How is it that, as the critic Brooks Atkinson once wrote, bureaucracies are organizations “designed to perform public business,” but seemingly “as soon as a bureaucracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy”?

Click to listen to a voiceover of this article by audyo.ai

Well, speaking of spiritual life, some of the more interesting corners of the internet have lately revived the old occult term “egregore.” An egregore is a type of demon or spirit that was believed to be inadvertently summoned or manifested by the collective thoughts of a group of people once they had gathered together in sufficient numbers. The egregore would then possess the thoughts of those people, functioning as a kind of swarm consciousness and causing them to act in ways they wouldn’t have ever considered as lone individuals. Later, when the group had dispersed, these individuals might express confusion about their actions, or even claim those actions had not been their own. The passionate inhibition of mobs and riots and the general “madness of crowds” are classic examples, but some in the past – such as Dostoevsky in his novel Demons (aka The Possessed) – have used similar terminology to describe and explain whole political ideologies or movements.

Today, some have begun to use egregores, metaphorically or not, to describe how people seem to be driven to mob-like, emotional, and often downright bizarre behavior when connected by the internet and social media. Others have gone further, describing the sudden, all-consuming passions for a certain cause or supposed crisis (aka the “Current Thing”) that now seem to regularly grip whole nations – before inexplicably disappearing and immediately being replaced by something else – as egregores in action.

So, let’s try thinking of bureaucracies as egregores, drawing the will of their constituent individuals into a collective will that becomes more than the sum of its parts, and then effectively pursuing their own “autonomous spiritual life.”

But first let’s approach this all from a different angle.

No one wants to live a meaningless life. Humans are meaning-seeking creatures, who approach and understand the world through the stories they tell about it. And they desperately want, need, what they do to have meaningful value. If they cannot find inherent meaning in life, they are liable to come up with a narrative framework – that is, a story – in which what they do can be embedded, and thereby imbued with some sense of higher meaning. Moreover, most people would much prefer to live life in a drama, ideally with some kind of overarching moral to it. Even a dark tale is better than a bland one, since everyone wants to be the hero of their story, and the story becomes central to their personal identity. And no one wants their identity to be dull (even if they’re a bureaucrat).

But while a few very special people can create and maintain their own personal stories indefinitely, living life entirely in their own self-sustained dramatic reality (and sometimes even drawing others into it), for most people the much easier and more reassuring route is to simply adopt a collective story that already exists. The more popular or high-status this story is, the more attractive and self-reinforcing it will be – and the harder it will therefore be to disbelieve, dissent, and defect from. 

As you can see, these memetic (replicating) collective stories, or memes, which possess their adopters (or, perhaps, adoptees) are very similar to egregores, or even functionally the same thing. The Current Thing is also a collective story.

Now, when one talks to members of the Washington establishment, the collective story they hold to tends to quickly become apparent.

None are, in their own minds, either corrupt cynics or ideological zealots. Almost to a (wo)man, they are moderate, prudent, wise “public servants,” who know what is best for the public. Businesslike, and full of worldly wisdom, they – like the great “Wise Men” of the Cold War before them – are the trained and chosen elite guardians of American interests and values. They are experts themselves, or smart enough to value and consult expertise in making decisions. Sensible centrists, they do what must be done to ensure America’s security and prosperity, steering the ship of state along a pragmatic course, eschewing both the goodhearted but naïve idealism of the too-far-left and the crude jingoistic nationalism of the populist-right. They responsibly set aside partisan differences on domestic politics to ensure national security.

This pragmatism does not, of course, preclude their simultaneously being moral exemplars. Indeed they embody America’s highest ideals, given that they are the ones extending the light of whatever truly makes America great through time and space, whether that be liberal democracy, equality and human rights, pluralism and diversity, scientific progress, or economic liberty. Whatever the specific partisan flavor of such values, it is American power that makes their preservation and extension possible. In protecting the global world order of Pax Americana from any threats, foreign or domestic, they make the world safe for American ideals. In fact, these guardians are basically the bulwark of Enlightened Civilization writ large, wielding the Imperial Truth to tame barbarian savagery wherever it rears its ugly head, whether in Afghanistan or Alabama. Even a moment’s slackness and “the jungle grows back.” American power is, as a Navy recruiting ad once put it, a “Global Force for Good.” American power therefore ultimately deserves be a universal power; this is not so much an object of the national interest as a cosmic imperative.

American power is righteous, because it is on the right side of History; which is clearly demonstrated by the fact that America is so powerful. And if that power is righteous and good, it deserves to be exercised; indeed it would be immoral not to exercise it. “What's the point of having the superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?” America’s first female Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked Gen. Colin Powell back in the 1990s when she wanted to bomb some folks in the Balkans in the name of liberal internationalism (as Greenwald himself recalls).[2] This was wholly rational thinking. To use righteous power to remake the world in our own image would by definition be to make the world better. To participate in American power is ultimately to participate in the Good. Thus extending American power is both the most pragmatic and the most idealistic possible course. Even for any professed “global citizen.” Temporarily compromising on some stated ideals in order to extend power is fully justified by this higher objective.

This story, which has been the dominant collective drama of Washington since at least the end of the Cold War, is what we might label The Consensus. Maybe all or some elements of The Consensus are true. Or maybe it’s all nonsense. It doesn’t really matter; that’s not the point. Those who submit themselves to The Consensus can by doing so automatically consider themselves better people, engaged in more meaningful lives. And their peers will consider them to be as well.

A term that one is liable to hear used in Washington is “Serious Person.”[3] On being asked to meet with someone he doesn’t know (maybe a journalist, or a potential new hire), for example, a Very Important Washingtonian may first inquire of his staff: “Well, is he a Serious Person?” But what makes a person Serious? A Serious Person is, naturally, an orthodox follower of The Consensus. Because he belongs to The Consensus, the Very Important Washingtonian in this example is himself a Serious Person (sober, moral, educated, trustworthy, aristocratic), even though he spends at least three hours a day indulging in deranged rants and very public petty personal disputes on Twitter. Asking if someone is a Serious Person is a bit like a secular version of how one might have asked, back in the day, whether some new fellow was in fact a “God-fearing Christian?” “Yes,” would come the reply, “and he went to Yale.” “Good enough, let’s put him in charge of the OSS,” you could then say with confidence.

Rumor that some new acquaintance is in fact a Serious Person is greatly reassuring, as it means he is not a “Wingnut.” A Wingnut is an unsociable crank, living outside of The Consensus, and therefore the opposite of a Serious Person. Wingnuts demonstrate this by suggesting unserious ideas, such as cutting the defense budget, curtailing the surveillance state, or questioning the demands of the public health bureaucracy. Wingnuts are obviously either manifestly unwell in the head, or agents of a foreign power. Glenn Greenwald is a Wingnut par excellence. Nobody wants to be associated with a Wingnut, as that can taint your reputation as a Serious Person. And then you’ll never be invited to a swanky conference in Aspen again. So it’s best to avoid and exclude them, or simply pretend they don’t exist. Which is probably why for every mile closer to Capitol Hill a foreign policy think tank is the more measurably it advocates in favor of militant internationalism. These are the Serious Institutions, able to court the serious money necessary to afford prime real estate; the others lurk literally on the fringes of power.

Here then is the point: why is it so likely that any given person in the Washington “Blob” will automatically support raising the defense budget, or intervening militarily in some country abroad, or otherwise expanding the security state? In the vast majority of cases, it’s not because they’re taking bribes from some defense contractor. It’s because they simply want more than anything to be counted among the Serious People. And to do that they first have to accept the word and practice of The Consensus.

Sometimes they may not fully buy it, but conform merely because it’s the path of least resistance. Often they do buy it completely. I once had a former General and Director of the CIA tell me, with complete earnestness, that the United States had to occupy every single “ungoverned space” on earth – every conflict zone, every “rogue state,” every barren patch of sand large enough for an ISIS terrorist to do donuts in a Toyota pickup… No one was paying him to say this (yet); it was pure idealistic conviction. And there are a lot of people far less distinguished than he who labor daily to help shore up The Consensus. Washington is filled with legions of non-profit workers, lowly staffers, and ambitious interns who happily pump out endless Consensus-reiterating briefing papers, reports, op-eds, and legislative bills (all of which are written by people under 35 who have no idea what they’re doing, by the way). The military-industrial complex doesn’t have to bribe any of them. They are working to cultivate the illustrious aura of a Serious Person.

Any financial rewards are secondary to the power, prestige, and psychological assurance of being counted among the ruling class and holding the right opinions. This, however, certainly does not mean there aren’t significant financial rewards that flow to senior figures. But while these rewards might to an outsider look like corruption, to the “public servant” on the inside they genuinely bear no conceivable trace of wrongful quid pro quo. As far as they are concerned, they are merely doing the right thing in service to the public and the nation, and being fairly compensated for it. Being paid to sit on Raytheon’s board and lobby for a strong national defense is public service. Being paid by CNN to go on TV and call dissenters a dangerous threat to our democracy is public service. Working for Twitter to help the security state more easily censor “harmful misinformation” is public service. Advancing The Consensus is, after all, public service, and so this is all simply the very image of Serious and wholesome “public-private cooperation.” This complex is utterly impervious to any charges of corruption or hypocrisy, because from the inside such charges literally sound like the mad rantings of an immoral and maliciously anti-American Wingnut.

Power is self-justifying. The story the ruling class tells – to others, but most importantly to itself – has conveniently absorbed and included their material interests. But these interests are secondary to the power of narrative. And the story serves power. When the Wingnut reveals himself, it is because he has resisted the unrestrained exercise of power in some way. This act is grounds not for admiration of virtue, but for shock and suspicion: the story tells that power does good and makes the world better; therefore he has taken a stand against what is good. He has challenged the validity of the story, perhaps proposing some alternative narrative like “live and let live” that is utterly antithetical to it. By doing so he is threatening the whole edifice; not just material interests, but the whole cosmic order and direction of things. In a real sense the Wingnut is not just unsociable but impious.

It would be tempting to call this ideological capture, but I don’t think that is quite describes it. The Consensus is not an ideology with clear or coherent doctrines. And it is extremely adaptable and flexible, seamlessly incorporating new threats and opportunities (which is why “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is now regularly cited as a top foreign policy priority, as was of course inevitable). Instead it works more loosely, subconsciously, to shape what individuals and institutions value and what they believe is right and normal and just. It really is more like a deep story about the world and how it works; or a spirit that moves subjects without their understanding how or why, or even that it exists.

Which is why – also to finally bring the egregores back into this – I think I need to introduce one more element in order to fully explain what really runs Washington.

Everyone and everything needs a hierarchy of values to operate, otherwise having no telos – no purpose, motivation, or orientation for action. Some things must be judged more important than other things. And at the top of this pyramid of values or principles must necessarily be some highest value or principle, from which all others descend. Bureaucracies, which are themselves pyramidal, subsume the individual’s values and objectives into themselves; the individual’s value hierarchy and telos is then effectively restructured or replaced by the telos superimposed from above by the bureaucracy. Which is why the bureaucracy seems to coopt its individuals and take on a life of its own. But many singular bureaucracies, such as the Defense and State Departments, exist side-by-side and operate simultaneously. And, at least theoretically, they are all part of the same government and on the same side. What unites them in direction and orientation, if anything? A pyramid of higher values, naturally. What is The Consensus? It is an egregore of egregores.

Does The Consensus itself also exist as part of another egregore, another higher – highest – story? Maybe. The author Paul Kingsnorth has I think wisely described there being, at the pinnacle of our collective Western civilizational subconscious, an “empty throne,” where once sat God.

[E]very culture, whether it knows it or not, is built around a sacred order. It does not, of course, need to be a Christian order. It could be Islamic, Hindu or Daoist. It could be based around the veneration of ancestors or the worship of Odin. But there is a throne at the heart of every culture, and whoever sits on it will be the force you take your instruction from.

“The modern experiment,” however, “has been the act of dethroning both literal human sovereigns and the representative of the sacred order, and replacing them with purely human, and purely abstract, notions – ‘the people’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘progress.’” But one sacred value must necessarily rule above all others, and “when a culture kills its sovereign, the throne will not remain empty for long.”

What now occupies this empty throne, if anything? Kingsnorth suggested it is “money.” I don’t think that’s it. As I’ve written already, I think it is something more fundamental: I think it’s the spirit desiring infinite “control” – which means power itself. The power to have all good things, from material comfort to equality, without any limits or contradictions; power over all evils and all suffering and all dangers; power over human nature; power to eliminate all friction between the will and the world. It’s the desire to have the power to overcome all resistance and achieve heaven on earth, as fast as possible, by any means necessary.

The efforts of those poor souls who spend their days trying to reason with Washington and convince it to follow some policy of “realism and restraint” are doomed. The place is busily fighting a holy war against the terms of existence.

It may be that at some point in the past, when the empty throne was occupied by its rightful ruler, America’s institutional egregores participated in a greater shared story, which subsumed their lower interests and appetites and rightly ordered them with a telos oriented toward a genuine highest good. Maybe this was God. Maybe it was or the American Idea, or the Republican Ideal. Whatever it was, perhaps its very existence limited and disciplined them. But if the baser value of power has now been elevated to this highest place, then they no longer have any internalized limits, and their quest has no stopping point. There are no longer any moral brakes on the run-away train of the state.

If so, then all the money of the military-industrial complex definitely doesn’t run Washington. Indeed, if the military-industrial complex didn’t exist we’d have to invent it immediately just so that we could hand it all of our money.

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[1] This is not certified financial advice. Do your own research on the motivations of warmongering swamp creatures before making investment decisions.

[2] “I thought I would have an aneurysm,” Powell later recollected.

[3] Exact terms may vary.