The Statesman-Rule of the generals

Rule of the generals

The term military-industrial complex was used by US President Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961. He warned against “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”. According to an analysis of this factor in US politics, Eisenhower’s comment did not include “a third member of the potent group: the politicians who sit in both houses of the Congress and enjoy their full share of the Pentagon’s business” (The Money Lords by Matthew Josephson,1972). The book described the dynamics of this linkage during the Cold War.
Eisenhower’s comment relates mostly to Europe during the Cold War. In contemporary forms in ‘modern’ settings in Asia, the military-industrial complex often coexists with feudal patterns associated with pre-modern cultural influences. Politics can be formally modern using voting and constitutions and operating modern-style industrial and military activities but these aspects of politics in most Third World countries are controlled by old elites.



In contemporary times, the military-industrial-political complex operates globally taking various forms. In the Asian context, it often takes crude forms wearing mantles of democracy. In the US context, it may take subtle, structural forms occasionally exposed in the free press.
In Pakistan, a well-known author, Ayesha Siddiqa, published a book entitled, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy last year, which presented documentary details about the army’s control of Pakistan’s economy. Pakistani army personnel, according to the book, own hundreds of businesses and millions of acres of land. According to her, the army has turned into an independent class. She described this relationship as “Milbus” or military business. According to her, it operates in all three sectors ~ agriculture, manufacturing and service. The military’s empire in Pakistan is worth billions of dollars, she wrote, but it is run with virtually no transparency or accountability. So-called free elections are unlikely to change this infrastructure of politics in Pakistan.
Political instability has marked Pakistan’s history since 1953 when Governor General Ghumam Muhammad dismissed the country’s first civilian government. Since then army chiefs and political leaders have dismissed 10 civilian governments that ruled for 27 years. The remaining 33 years were ruled by the military often in conjunction with political parties.
According to an article in Guardian Weekly last year, one of the reasons democracy did not thrive in Pakistan is because of the power of the landowning class which remains the social base from which politicians emerge. In many backward areas, the local zamindar exerts political influence expecting his people to vote for his chosen candidate. Such loyalty can be enforced. Many big zamindars have private prisons and private armies.
Sectarian diversity in rural areas is marked by militants who were financed by the ISI for 25 years for deployment in Afghanistan and then Kashmir to fight proxy wars for the army. Twenty-nine years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistani army-supported militants ~ thousands of armed, unemployed jihadis with modern weapons ~ have created mayhem.
Myanmar is a case of the crudest form of military-industrial-political complex. Since the military coup in 1962, the army has controlled the politics and economy directly. The military junta uses forced labour to construct projects for the army. Its opposition leader, Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has spent over 12 years under house arrest. When we look at Myanmar’s political history, we see how Washington shows a discriminatory approach to democracy and human rights. It condemned Saddam Hussein’s autocracy and overthrew him, but did not act strongly against the military autocracy in Myanmar. According to a report in the Guardian magazine, an estimated 95,000 people teeter on the brink of starvation, hiding in the jungles. The ranks of refugees in camps in Thailand have swelled to 153,000.
The military junta in Myanmar built a new capital city in the northern part of the state where high-class residential facilities for army officers and their families were built at a cost of over $200 million, according to a report by the International Monetary Fund. Over half of the annual budget is spent for the benefit of the 400,000-strong military shelling out billions of dollars on military equipment.
Leading Asian countries like India and China do not officially criticise and act to change Myanmar’s military rule. China once vetoed a UN Security Council resolution requiring the restoration of democracy in Myanmar. India and China along with Thailand, another neighbour, are motivated by economic interests in their relationships with one of the worst military dictatorships in recent history. A Chinese firm and the state-owned electric company of Thailand are interested in building a hydro-power plant on the Salween river on the border with Thailand. Beijing has also established strategic facilities for blue water naval operations and installed a technical network in Mynamar’s southern coastal belt bordering India.
India is a rare Asian country where politics is not crudely influenced by the military-industrial complex. But as its policy to Myanmar shows, it supports the military-industrial complex when geo-strategic and geo-economic interests are served. India showed interest in participating in the massive Swe gas project with a pipeline to India. According to a recent report, India has agreed to build a multimillion dollar seaport and transportation system in Myanmar.
If we look at the political history of China, Indonesia and Thailand, we find the operation of military-industrial complexes in these countries too. In China, military influence on politics developed during Mao’s regime. In Indonesia, under Sukarno the army was a part of the ruling elite. Later, when Suharto took over in 1965 after the massacre of the communists, the military became part of the political and economic elite. According to the history of this takeover of politics in The Army and Politics in Indonesia by Harold Crouch (1978), the army became more powerful in the economic and political arena. The President of Indonesia once was a former army general.
Thailand is, also dominated by the military. One can describe it as a monarchy-military-industrial complex since Thailand is ruled by a monarch. The overthrow of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra last year and the takeover of power by the military with the monarch’s approval is a dramatic case of this type of complex.
If we extend analysis of this factor to other parts of the world, we can find different forms of the operation of this complex. According to a report in the British media, the British government paid over a billion pounds to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia following UK’s biggest arms deal with the country.
Saudi Arabia is a rare monarchy where the country it rules is named after a family dynasty which profits from its oil industry links with the Western world.

(The author is Professor Emeritus, California State University, Sacramento)