Buying for Armageddon: Factors influencing post-World War II weapons purchases since the Cuban Missile Crisis

The central problem of this study is the role that the economy and economic interests play in decisions about United States weapons systems acquisition. Despite a voluminous literature discussing the formation of military policy, journalistic accounts of business influence on military policy dominate the literature. A notable exception to this pattern is Griffin, Devine, and Wallace's use of time series data on military expenditures to assess Baran and Sweezy's thesis that military expenditures are necessary to the good health of the monopoly sector of the U.S. economy. Using similar techniques and an expanded data set this dissertation systematically investigates the effect of business political action and major economic forces on the quantity and types of weapons purchased since the Cuban Missile Crisis. This research addresses issues concerning military policy in the U.S. and recent theoretical debates about the relationship between the state and society.;The explanatory variables for this study are drawn from the Organizational Politics, Special Interest Politics, and Monopoly Capital models of military expenditures. Additionally, class-based political mobilization are proposed as influencing spending decisions. An important contribution of this study is the use of disaggregated procurement expenditure data. Data series describing U.S. expenditures on chemicals, ammunition, weapons, armored vehicles, aircraft, electronics, guided missiles, communications equipment, and ships constitute the framework for the analysis. Analyses of spending on Total Procurement, Operations and Maintenance, and Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation are also included.;Findings indicate that defense contractor rates of profit have a positive relationship to procurement expenditures of most types. This is opposite of the effect posited by most of the literature. Elite political mobilization, measured by the activity of the Committee on the Present Danger, a group at the core of the New Right Social Movement, has a positive effect on expenditures. The formation of this group was apparently spurred by domestic political factors including the election of Jimmy Carter and by crises producing changes in the world economy, measured by the value of Middle Eastern oil production. This effect is largest for spending related to intervention in less developed nations. Corporate income from assets abroad also has a similar positive effect on expenditures. This research generally supports Monopoly Capital, Elite Politics, and a modified Special Interest Politics model of military expenditures. The data suggest that the state is significantly effected by special interest and elite group political action and by institutionalized responses to the changing foreign interests of U.S. based corporations.