From: _The White House Years 1956-61_ by Dwight D. Eisenhower: During the years of my Presidency, and especially the latter years, I began to feel more and more uneasiness about the effect on the nation of tremendous peacetime military expenditures. In the peaceful life-span of the United States, our practice had been to maintain a minimum defense establishment. For a time, we trusted to the protection of two vast oceans. We frequently indulged in a rather naive belief that any American could be made into a competent soldier within a matter of weeks or days. Every one of our wars was followed by rapid, drastic demobilization in the assumption that the world had become too civilized to fight again. With victory in World War II we began to reduce our forces so precipitously that every year from 1947 to 1950--on the eve of the Korean War--our annual military budget never exceeded $12 billion. But in mid-1953, after the end of the Korean War, I determined that we would not again become so weak militarily as to encourage aggression. This decision demanded a military budget that would establish, by its very size, a peacetime precedent. None of us was blind to the possible consequences of this move. We knew that such immense expenditures were made necessary by the frictions of international politics and the growing costs of weaponry. The effects of these expenditures on the nation's economy would be serious. Some of these effects would surely be seen as beneficial. But their eventual influence on our national life, unless watched by an alert citizenry, could become almost overpowering. To counter this caution, there are, of course, other interested parties. Many groups find much value to themselves in constant increases in defense expenditures, The military services, traditionally concerned with 100 per cent security, are rarely satisfied with the amounts allocated to them, out of an even generous budget. The makers of the expensive munitions of war, to be sure, like the profits they receive, and the greater the expenditures the more lucrative the profits. Under the spur of profit potential, powerful lobbies spring up to argue for even larger munitions expenditures. And the web of special interest grows. Each community in which a manufacturing plant or a military installation is located profits from the money spent and the jobs created in the area. This fact, of course, constantly presses on the community's political representatives---congressmen, senators, and others--to maintain the facility at maximum strength. All of these forces, and more, tend, therefore, to override the convictions of responsible officials who are determined to have a defense structure of adequate size but are equally determined that it shall not grow beyond that level. In the long run, the combinations of pressures for growth can create an almost overpowering influence. Unjustified military spending is nothing more than a distorted use of the nation's resources. In the making of every military budget, my associates and I were guided by these considerations. We did our best to achieve real security without surrendering to special interest. The idea, then, of making a final address as President to the nation seemed to call on me to warn the nation, again, of the danger in these developments. I could think of no better way to emphasize this than to include a sobering message in what might otherwise have been a farewell of pleasantries.