A solution here is an uneasy one. Outright removing Fort Bragg from the equation is an idealistic idea, but would be met with great resistance by not just the military but those who rely on the post for their income. Slowly scaling back the military presence and having the military pour money in to the cultivation of a more diverse job base sounds overly democratic and perhaps a little naive. The best way to know what to do in the future may be to look at what was done the last time the United States demilitarized, though it’s debatable how much there is to learn from an economic situation a century ago.
Since the United States has not effectively demilitarized since World War One, the country has been steadily raising its military spending to the point where it easily eclipses that of other nations. The Pentagon does not solely use this massive budget for the waging of war, however, This money lubricates American politics, filling campaign coffers … It provides lucrative “second careers” for returned U.S. Military officers hired by weapons manufacturers … It funds the activities of think tanks that relentlessly advocate for policies guaranteed to fend off challenges to established conventions. (Bacevich 228) The accepted narrative is that the massive spending undertaken by the military industrial complex is to better the nation. Money gets poured into research and development, manufacturing jobs are created. Not only does military created technology like GPS work its way into civilian hands, but military money creates jobs and paychecks are in turn fed back into the American economy. But this is not necessarily the case, “Economic research, however, tells a very different tale. Military spending has produced fewer jobs per dollar than other kinds of government spending” (Lutz 174). The money poured into the military industrial complex would create more jobs and yield better results were it spent into sectors of healthcare and science and technology. Yet it remains the property of the military, because there remains this state of semiwar; a holdover from the Cold War where the United States had to perpetually prepared to jump to arms at a moment’s notice in defense of freedom. That the Cold War is decades ended is irrelevant, there will always be an enemy to the American way of life and the United States will always be ready. Moving forward, there needs to be a reexamination of this narrative. Not only must there be a shift in financial focus to other sectors, but there needs to be the acceptance that the nature of warfare has changed and with it what is needed. Tanks are far less practical than in World War Two and ship-to-ship combat has become a thing of the past. President Obama acknowledged this in a debate, explaining to opponent Mitt Romney that “we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military 's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines” (Commission on Presidential Debates). Force multipliers play an incomparable role in modern warfare. New technology goes further and …show more content…
This means admitting mistakes and realizing its shortcomings. If actions like the Vietnam War, arming the mujahideen or even using Latin America as a backyard for the CIA cannot be seen as mistakes then nothing can be learned from them. Furthermore, if the lessons learned are myopic, believing their greatest flaw to be a lack of militarization, then the lesson learned is the wrong one.
There are a host of problems that American Militarism has brought. Large military presences remain in places like Okinawa where the United States has little tactical need to be. Sexual assault and rape is systemic in military ranks and go unreported and unpunished. Private military contractors are given free reign of war zones with minimal oversight. Recent reports of torture done by the United States show the nation to be less than scrupulous in its pursuit of justice.
These are all things that bear a closer look. This may end up forcing the United States to change its narrative as the good guys, or at the very least admitting that they are responsible for some of the current woes in the modern
Since the United States has not effectively demilitarized since World War One, the country has been steadily raising its military spending to the point where it easily eclipses that of other nations. The Pentagon does not solely use this massive budget for the waging of war, however, This money lubricates American politics, filling campaign coffers … It provides lucrative “second careers” for returned U.S. Military officers hired by weapons manufacturers … It funds the activities of think tanks that relentlessly advocate for policies guaranteed to fend off challenges to established conventions. (Bacevich 228) The accepted narrative is that the massive spending undertaken by the military industrial complex is to better the nation. Money gets poured into research and development, manufacturing jobs are created. Not only does military created technology like GPS work its way into civilian hands, but military money creates jobs and paychecks are in turn fed back into the American economy. But this is not necessarily the case, “Economic research, however, tells a very different tale. Military spending has produced fewer jobs per dollar than other kinds of government spending” (Lutz 174). The money poured into the military industrial complex would create more jobs and yield better results were it spent into sectors of healthcare and science and technology. Yet it remains the property of the military, because there remains this state of semiwar; a holdover from the Cold War where the United States had to perpetually prepared to jump to arms at a moment’s notice in defense of freedom. That the Cold War is decades ended is irrelevant, there will always be an enemy to the American way of life and the United States will always be ready. Moving forward, there needs to be a reexamination of this narrative. Not only must there be a shift in financial focus to other sectors, but there needs to be the acceptance that the nature of warfare has changed and with it what is needed. Tanks are far less practical than in World War Two and ship-to-ship combat has become a thing of the past. President Obama acknowledged this in a debate, explaining to opponent Mitt Romney that “we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military 's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines” (Commission on Presidential Debates). Force multipliers play an incomparable role in modern warfare. New technology goes further and …show more content…
This means admitting mistakes and realizing its shortcomings. If actions like the Vietnam War, arming the mujahideen or even using Latin America as a backyard for the CIA cannot be seen as mistakes then nothing can be learned from them. Furthermore, if the lessons learned are myopic, believing their greatest flaw to be a lack of militarization, then the lesson learned is the wrong one.
There are a host of problems that American Militarism has brought. Large military presences remain in places like Okinawa where the United States has little tactical need to be. Sexual assault and rape is systemic in military ranks and go unreported and unpunished. Private military contractors are given free reign of war zones with minimal oversight. Recent reports of torture done by the United States show the nation to be less than scrupulous in its pursuit of justice.
These are all things that bear a closer look. This may end up forcing the United States to change its narrative as the good guys, or at the very least admitting that they are responsible for some of the current woes in the modern