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Yglesias

Fun With Causation

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.

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