Francis: You’re inference at the end of this piece, “It’s time to make industrial mobilization cool again,” infers that there was a time when it was cool in the past. I’m not sure I recall that, Eric. But if it does you suggest two things…
Eric: Well first, industrial mobilization was very cool after World War II and the Korean War, and it wasn’t until the 1960s that you start seeing a big draw down in terms of critical material stockpiling and emphasis on large capital equipment and facilities, that the government would often own and the contractors operate.
That was a slice from my interview on Government Matters with Francis Rose, Preparing the US industrial base for mobilization. Francis raised a good question that I probably hadn’t considered closely enough before I chose the slogan, “Make industrial mobilization cool again!” The most direct and objective measure is probably Google Ngram viewer, which shows a term’s frequency across Google’s “text corpus.”
Here’s one for “industrial mobilization” relative to “military procurement.” Both are pretty unpopular today. But “industrial mobilization” was mentioned almost 100 times more often in 1950 than it was in 2019. Notably, “industrial mobilization” mentions dropped off much faster than the term “military procurement.”
I suspect that interest in industrial mobilization fell off as a consequence of strategic thought moving to nuclear strategy, especially with the success of ballistic missiles. In a nuclear context, everything that matters happens on the first day. In a conventional context, prolonged mobilization is what matters.
The Google Ngram for “nuclear war” got its first peak right around the Cuban Missile Crisis and enjoyed even more popularity in the 1980s. At it’s peak, the frequency of “nuclear war” was 10 times that what “industrial mobilization” ever achieved.
I’d like to do an “over-time” view of the relevant war mobilization offices throughout the government between the 1940s and 1960s. I imagine they fall dramatically in number and status. First with Eisenhower’s “New Look” emphasis on nuclear weapons, and then after the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s interesting that the US never had to industrially mobilize for Vietnam or Iraq I/II — I’m less certain that’ll be true for Great Power Competition.
Here’s a bit on the similar decline in interest for critical material stockpiling:
In 1962 President Kennedy announced that he was “astonished to find that the stockpiling program had accumulated $7.7 billion worth of materials, an amount nearly $3.4 billion greater than estimated wartime needs” (Snyder, 1966)… A congressional investigation held in 1962 and 1963 featured open hearings to examine the operations of the stockpile. The Interdepartmental Disposal Committee was established by the Director of the Office of Emergency Planning in 1963 to develop long-range disposal plans for materials no longer required (Office of Emergency Planning, 1965). By the end of 1965 disposal sales of stockpile materials had reached $1.6 billion (Office of Emergency Planning, 1966).
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