I'm not just guessing. I don't have the exact numbers for overseas sales of American weapons, but I know they are significantly less than weapon sales from American companies to the US military. The difference is enough that when you combine the drop in % of GDP for the military over the course of, and since the end of, the cold war, there isn't anyway that the military industrial complex can be bigger in % of GDP terms.
Its also very unlikely that its bigger in terms of people employed. Manufacturing in the US produces more value with a lot less people than it used to, defense is not immune to this. If you really want to maintain that the "military industrial complex" employs a larger percentage of Americans than during the cold war or WWII, I don't have hard data (except for WWII) to prove you wrong, but its extremely unlikely. If you include the soldiers in the military as part of the military industrial complex (and I think you should) then we definitely employee less people than in the past, as our military is much smaller in number terms.
Since we are currently fighting a war you should compare to other wars (WWII, Korea, Vietnam), but even if you compare to the period between Korean and Vietnam *, the military, and the "military industrial complex" is smaller as a portion of the US (% of people employed,% of hours worked, % of GDP, % of government spending etc.)
If you just want to compare the end of Clinton's administration to today then yes the "military industrial complex" has grown, but its still a smaller part of the country than it was under Reagan, much smaller than Vietnam or Korea, and incredibly smaller than during WWII.
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* in a certain sense there is no "between Korea and Vietnam, as preliminary involvement in Vietnam started before Korea ended, but most people wouldn't consider such a low level of involvement to be part of the Vietnam War |
