Peter G. Peterson Quotes

We can always find money for what the military wants.

The military system is, to a substantial extent, a method whereby the population provides a subsidy to the high technology industry.

The defense industry understands that the military budgets will continue to be cut until a new threat comes along.

America must always be the world's paramount military power

The United States historicaly has had its military more closely connected with new technology than any other coutnry.

A major power can afford a military debacle only when it looks like a political victory.

We won't always have the strongest military.

Our military is meant to fight and win war.

The military always asks for more [appropriations] than it gets.

The military market is based on human folly, not normal market precepts. Human folly goes up and down, but it always exists. It's depths have never been plumbed.

... a caricature of Mr. Military Industrial Complex.

If the people are not convinced that the Free World is in mortal danger it would be impossible for Congress to vote the vast sums now being spent to avert danger. With the support of public opinion, as marshaled by the press, we are off to a good start. It is our Job --- yours and mine --- to keep our people convinced that the only way to keep disaster away from our shores is to build up America's might.

What chiefly governs the military budget is the need to spend enormous sums of money in a useless way. The allegedly powerful Pentagon is simply a receptacle for wasteful expenditure, just as a city dump is the receptacle for the refuse of a city.

Being a great power is very expensive.

Standing armies, in the time of peace, are dangerous to liberty

The time has come to recognize that the U.S. will continue to exercise unprecedented power in a world where international rules are still unreliable and where security and advancing of the free democratic order still depend significantly on the possession and use of military might.

The Military Industrial Complex. President Eisenhower had it wrong. It’s the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

If our economy is strong, that means the military will be strong. If our economy is weak, that weakens our military.

The Pentagon doesn’t need more money. What it needs desperately is a functional procurement system …. The result [of not having one] is not just ordinary waste, fraud and abuse … but also deep and lasting damage to the country’s ability to project power and wage war.

In the councils of government 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. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

I believe that the military-industrial complex is more important than ever. This is because the war in Kosovo gave fresh impetus not to the military-industrial complex but to the military-scientific complex. You can see this in China.

The military budget is simply an enormous pork barrel of special privilege, the privileges taking the form of windfall profits, of no-risk profits and, most importantly, of enormous outlays of capital supplied by the Pentagon to arms contractors.

We need to just study what other countries have done. There are examples of a strong partnership between the defence establishment and the private industry.

That is the best Government, which best provides for war.

The armored vehicle manufacturing base is not a light switch that can be turned on and off at will. If we mothball production of systems like the Abrams tank, it will take time and money to get this capability back.