ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author compares several theories that social scientists have offered about the formulation of American military policy. In the wake of the Vietnamese War and under the threat of a costly and dangerous Soviet-American arms race, basic questions are being asked about the making of American military policy. The military establishment's ascendency in society is maintained through the complex of political, organizational, and technological activities involved in the procurement of advanced weapons. The author describes five major competing explanations of American military policies: the strategic, the technocratic, the bureaucratic, the democratic, and the economic. The bureaucratic and economic explanations in combination yield, of course, the theory of the military-industrial complex, which in its pure form argues that the military and industry are roughly equal in their influence on policy outcomes. A large number of aerospace corporations produced military aircraft, missiles, or space systems.
