The invincible military-industrial complex: Leon Panetta's dream is Eisenhower's nightmare.

• Author: de Rugy, Veronique
• Position: Columns - Dwight D. Eisenhower - Column

DURING HIS 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned the American people that one of the greatest threats to freedom came not from enemies abroad but from "the conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry," which over time would lose sight of defending the United States and become devoted only to its own perpetuation. "In the councils of government," said the man who had commanded the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, "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."

Today we are living Ike's nightmare. Defense spending is not just one of the most sacrosanct parts of the budget but also one of the largest and most inscrutable. Adjusting for inflation, military spending has grown for an unprecedented 13 consecutive years and is now higher than at any time since World War II. Even excluding war costs, the military baseline budget has grown by about 50 percent during the last decade.

Yet the faintest suggestion of a plan to reduce the rate of the defense budget's growth inevitably triggers dire warnings that Americans will soon be speaking Russian, Chinese, Arabic, or the mother tongue of whoever is deemed the most powerful adversary of the moment. Consider the Pentagon's reaction to the recent threat of defense spending reductions following the failure of the Joint Select committee on Deficit Reduction (popularly known as the "supercommittee") to find deficit savings of $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The lack of a deal triggered an alternative path to those savings: a sequestration that would cut projected overall spending by $1.2 trillion between 2013 and 2021. Half of those savings are to come from the defense budget-an annual hit of about $54 billion compared to current administration plans.

But don't confuse that $54 billion with reductions from current spending levels. In August 2011, the Congressional Budget Office projected that discretionary national defense spending (96 percent of all military spending), excluding the wars, would cost $5.3 trillion between 2013 and 2021. After sequestration, that spending will instead total $4.8 trillion, or $500 billion less. That's 10 percent less than otherwise projected (see the chart) but still 10 percent higher than current defense spending.

How did apologists for the...