Channeling Eisenhower

The Framers’ reading of Roman history was correct, and their marked fear of, and guarding against, militarism was justified. If they were around today, they would remark that the limitations they put in place were not strong enough, and that Rome was being repeated. They knew that having large standing armed forces is a danger to both economy and democracy/the republic. It causes threats to be inflated or invented; it colors both perceptions and options in regards to international affairs; it breeds wars of aggression; it produces enemies from those who might be neutral or even friendly; it tempts its unwarranted use by policymakers; it obscures true self-defense and true national interest; it promotes and enriches selfish, corrupt, and connected individuals and organizations; it feeds, infuses, and justifies itself; it breeds non-producers and penalizes and weakens the non-producers, to the utter detriment of economic and social health; it drains vitally needed resources from the infrastructural and social needs of the society; it separates the population from the responsibility and involvement and meaningfully felt consequences of military actions taken; out of arrogant power, it fosters conflict instead of cooperation; as the social and economic society decays around it, it becomes the proficient and respected force that people look to for some sort of salvation, leading to further increase in its power; and its members, and especially its leaders, come gradually to both lose respect for civilian decision makers (and their authority), and to insert themselves further and further into the processes of politics.

America needs to shake off the obscuring hegemonic dust from its eyes, dust that is as old as WW2, and realize that it MUST both envision and make happen—soon—a much smaller standing military. Rather than structure itself for some nebulous “war on terrorism,” while simultaneously structuring for some big WW2/Cold War pan-conflict, and all the large forces that postulates, it needs to go in the opposite direction. It needs a very small, highly proficient force of special operations and related troops that can address the asymmetrical warfare likely, and leave to the National Guard (the militia; remember, those folks the Framers spoke of in the Constitution?) having cadres of specialized instructors and officers who can plan and provide for the possibility of needing to mobilize large numbers when true threats to the defense of the US and its true interests arise.

This would break the military-industrial complex, will lose some established expertise, and comes with it some risk. But the risk to continuing on our present course is no risk at all—it is certain self-decay and self-destruction.