1987

George Kennan:

Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to go on, substantially unchanged until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.

Via Glenn Diesen, The Ukraine War & the Eurasian World Order via, in turn, Terry Cowan

Nothing has changed. It is literally true that we invent enemies to justify feeding what Dwight Eisenhower presciently called “the military-industrial complex.”