Economic militarism

Economic militarism is the ideology surrounding the use of military expenditure to prop up an economy, or the use of military power to gain control or access to territory or other economic resources.

Brief history of the term

The first important use dates from 1939 with Germany Rampant: A Study in Economic Militarism by Ernest Hambloch, a long-serving British diplomat. Germany Rampant "traces the philosophy of Nazism to the German mythological figures of ancient times."

Since this book the term has been used in connection with the ancient Aztecs, and with militaristic movements in a variety of cultures, and applies to the ideological and cultural aspects of a state, society or group that sustain the drive for hegemony or empire. For example Joseph Kenney applies the term to the Almoravids.

In 2003 Clyde Prestowitz, of the Economic Strategy Institute published a book containing his analysis of what he called economic militarism in American foreign policy, that was reviewed in The Economist magazine.

See also

• Militarism
• Military Keynesianism
• Military-industrial complex
• Permanent war economy
• War economy
• Immanuel Wallerstein