If you look at American history, you’ll see a pattern. When there’s a war to be fought, we tend to build a military to fight it. With the war done, we demobilize and reduce defense spending. Then at some future point, a new situation emerges that seems to warrant increases in military expenditures. Seems obvious, right? When the Spanish-American War ends, we demobilize. When World War One starts, we mobilize. When it ends, we demobilize.
Apparently Max Boot reads this history to mean that postwar demobilizations cause wars.

Previous in TP Yglesias


By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.