Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military-industrial complex has undergone significant adjustments, profoundly impacting U.S. defense capabilities and foreign policy. Employing the principal-agent theory, rent-seeking theory, and military-industrial relations theory, this paper constructs a multi-level, multi-dimensional analytical framework to systematically examine the mechanisms through which the military-industrial complex influences U.S. defense capabilities and foreign policy. The research finds that the high concentration and long cycle of the defense market, the rent-seeking behavior of military enterprises, and the symbiotic alliance of the military-industrial complex have jointly led to inefficiency and misallocation of resources in the U.S. defense sector, weakening U.S. military innovation and strategic adaptability, while promoting the militarization tendency of U.S. foreign policy and intensifying China-U.S. strategic competition. This study enriches the theoretical connotation of the military-industrial complex and provides a new analytical perspective for accurately grasping the direction of U.S. foreign policy and properly addressing the challenges in China-U.S. relations.

Keywords: U.S. Military-Industrial Complex, Foreign Policy, Sino-U.S. Relations

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Conflicts of Interest:

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study.

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Power Under the Shadow: The Dual Impact of the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex