Military-industrial complex?

From the introduction to Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski's For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America, the textbook for the American military history I'm TAing for this quarter:

"When gauging America's strength against potential enemies, policy makers realized that the nation could devote its energies and financial resources to internal development rather than to maintaining a large and expensive peacetime military establishment." (xii)

I'd hate to see what the tab would be if we had a "large and expensive" military buildup, since ours is evidently more modest.