Early in his presidency, Dwight David Eisenhower, better known as “Ike,” delivered a speech unlike any that had been given by a U.S. president. Known both as the “Chance for Peace” and the “Cross of Iron” speech, in it he lays out plainly the steep costs of war and the encroachment of military spending on domestic priorities. Speaking before the Newspaper Editors’ Association on April 16, 1953, he called on America and the Soviet Union to take a different path, away from the Cold war and its ensuing arms race. Otherwise, the best we could expect was “a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and labor of all peoples.”
Unfortunately, his warning was not heeded. Spending today on war preparation and war making is at near record levels in the United States, consuming six out of every ten dollars in the discretionary federal budget and crowding out many other areas of human security. Now, 70 years later, fresh ideas for turning the American public away from “the dread road” of militarism, to demand a different political economy – one that is not based on perpetual war – are still desperately needed.
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