From 1789 to 1947, the United States had a Department of War. The name was pretty straightforward. The reason for the department was to oversee the war fighting aspects of the United States, starting shortly after the formation of the current U.S. government through the end of World War II. To that point the U.S. in general would sharply curtail the size of the military after fighting a war and then build back up for the next.
That changed around the same time that the War Department was retired in1947 and a new office opened up called the The National Military Establishment which was renamed two years later to the Department of Defense. The final Secretary of War was Kenneth Claiborne Royall who would later be ousted as the Secretary of the Army for refusing to follow Truman’s order to desegregate the Army. History has vindicated Kenneth Royall as the U.S. has not won a near-peer war since the military was racially desegregated.
What changed was that the U.S. went on what was essentially a perpetual war footing from the end of World War II onward. Rather than downsizing, we acted as if we were always at war and did our best to find enemies to defend against. See, now it isn’t about war, it is about “defense”. Ironically we haven’t used our military to defend the actual U.S. since the War Department became the Department of Defense.
Since World War II, the “good war”, we got ourselves into two wars in Asia, first in Korea starting in 1950 and running until 1953 and then in Vietnam in the early 1960s through the fall of Saigon which had it’s 50th anniversary this week, April 30th 1975. We lost both of them.
Of course during all of this time we had the threat of the Soviet Union and nuclear war, with NATO and the Warsaw Pact staring at each other across Europe and smaller shadowy proxy wars occurring all over the globe. That itself provided the pretext for a permanent war footing and enormous spending on behalf of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 we needed a new enemy to justify spending hundreds of billions a year on “defense” and in stepped “militant Islam”. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990 followed by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing helped to pivot the fickle attention of the American people away from Moscow and toward the Middle East. Then came 9/11 and the Global War On Terror (GWOT) and the military-industrial complex was looking at a 20 year stretch of limitless spending.
Something else changed post-World War II. During the Second World War, the war effort was a whole-of-society collective effort. Americans were urged to not eat meat or sugar certain days so it could go to the troops, to collect and recycle metals for the war effort, to grow “Victory Gardens” to allow commercial produce to be sent overseas. The whole nation was deeply involved in the effort even as the war didn’t directly touch mainland U.S. soil.
Korea and Vietnam introduced war as a spectator sport with nightly news footage of the fighting. The first Gulf war gave us live, real-time action. People my age remember the correspondents giving live updates as air raid sirens were going off in Baghdad and the crushing victory of America forces with Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf giving updates like a coach at halftime.
“Defense” became all about the cool toys, cruise missiles and stealth bombers and other hyper-advanced weaponry. That is where we focused our spending and attention and when it failed to account for the savagery of on the ground street fighting like in Mogadishu and Fallujah? Well we just needed even more advanced toys.
While we were told that we needed to “fight them over there so we didn’t have to fight them here”, that excuse grew pretty stale quickly. Either 9/11 was the greatest example of someone getting lucky in human history or there was a lot more going on than just some goat humpers hijacking planes (spoiler: it is the latter). The GWOT was all about military adventures “over there”.
Along the way to where we are today we forgot that defending the nation is far more than just building more and better bombs. For decades we have invested in our enormous carrier fleet that dwarfs the rest of the world combined. Aircraft carriers are not for defending the homeland, they are about projecting power around the globe. Most American military spending is offensive in nature, targeted first at a massive land war in Europe and then shifting to fighting in the Middle East.
That brings me to the point I am trying to make. John Wilder ran a post earlier this week, Tariffs: How’s That Going For You?, looking at tariffs and what they mean on a larger scale. Most people don’t understand the topic at all, it becomes either Orange Man Bad wants tariffs so they are the worst thing ever or Trump says we need tariffs so I am for them. But what is the real point of these tariffs?
While we were building a massive and sustained war machine for fighting in Europe and the Middle East, we permitted our industrial base to be shipped overseas. The same with the pharmaceutical business to the point that we get much of our critically needed meds from overseas from a nation that is our only serious geopolitical rival, one that has designs on pushing the U.S. off our perch as cock of the walk in the Pacific.
Worst of all, our agricultural industry is also deeply infected with Chinese influence. One of America’s greatest strengths is that we are separated from Europe and Asia by oceans and we have some of the world’s most productive farm ground in unparalleled quantity. We can raise enough food to feed everyone in America and then some. Not to mention our access to natural resources like coal, iron, copper and petroleum.
As Germany learned twice last century, having an awesome army isn’t worth much if you can’t feed your people or fuel your Panzers.
The Big Idea of tariffs as I understand it is to reorient the global marketplace away from Americans as consumers and Asians as producers and back to a place where most of the goods in the American marketplace are made in America. Will that cause goods to cost more? Yes it will. Then again are we really benefitting from cheaper goods when they don’t last? I often order shoes for Amish kids, from Nikes to Skechers, and they are junk no matter the price. I remember my dad, who wore suits to work as a doctor every day, wearing the same dress shoes for most of the years I was growing up because they lasted. Would a well made shoe that lasts for years cost more? Sure but is it really cheaper to keep buying new shoes that come apart after six months?
Shoes are one thing but what about critical infrastructure like power transformers? Or the steel to make new tanks? Oil and coal to drive those tanks and keep the lights on at home?
Of course this also means controlling who comes into your country and who is living here. Right now we can level entire cities anywhere in the world without breaking a sweat but we can’t even account for the tens of millions of people living in our own cities illegally.
Real national defense starts with being able to provide for your own people. That is far more important than the precious GDP or the quarterly profits of some globohomo corporation. A nation that is self-sufficient is much harder to manipulate than one dependent on rivals and adversaries for essential goods. An America that makes our own stuff, secures our borders and controls who lives here and only spends half of our current military budget is far more secure than a nation with a trillion dollar military budget that can’t make socks or pills.
About the time of the War of 1812, Henry Clay a Senator from Kentucky, advocated what he referred to as the American System. Why send our treasure to Foreign Countries for our manufacters, when they could be produced here in America. Also he warned about obtaining critical items from a Nation that we could find ourselves at War with.
Following the wisdom of our founding fathers would do us well today.
“America… goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.”
― John Quincy Adams
Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, stated that peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations were essential principles for the government, while avoiding entangling alliances.
“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world”: it was George Washington’s Farewell Address to us.
Even the India-Pakiastan situation screams CIA actions to “weaken China” as they are trying to be allys to both.
I’m pretty sure the founding fathers would be offended by our collection of 3 letter agencies and the Department of Homeland Security (how to spell that in German, anybody?)
Marcus Tullius Cicero once said, “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.”
“Real National Defense”. The macro of prepping. Just like the enigmatic relationship between quantum mechanics and astrophysics. Once again, the brilliance of Man, captured not in symphonies but in nursery rhymes.
America’s only legitimate business is the safety and well being of the homeland the heritage American people. No defending democracy, pushing womyn’s/homosexual ‘rights,’ or policing the world. Let’s go back to foreign policy befored Teddy roosevelt saddled us with the Philippines and Puerto rico. No more Guam or even Hawaii. Just a White CONUS.
I would second that Sister…All in favor say Aye…
I second the motion.
(uhh…Lineman already said that. More coffee please…)
Great minds and all that entails Brother😉
The US became an empire after WWII, pretty well by default, since it was the last true superpower (USSR notwithstanding) on Earth. Britain was the last European empire, and it was laid low by the war, with it’s decline already under way even before that. It’s fall probably wasn’t truly apparent until sometime later – it maintained the pretensions of a superpower through the 1980’s even – but the point is that the US was left as King Shit on the world stage.
I don’t know if the transformation into an empire was inevitable, or if it was a function of the wrong sorts of assholes getting into power and steering it that way. I do know that it has been a large part of the ruination of our country (which doesn’t functionally exist anymore, except in name). The globohomo agenda (forcing the dilution of White nations with garbage invaders, and generally destructive leftist policies that have done enormous economic and social damage) has been the other big part of what has sunk us. The war machine was (is) just part and parcel of being an empire, with all that entails.
But now that we are in terminal decline, the war machine will be found to be ineffective and impotent, as it more or less has been been since Korea, and it hasn’t even faced a true peer as an adversary in all the time since then. Certainly a lot of the failures of the military have stemmed from shitty rules of engagement, and political meddling making it impossible to achieve a victory by artificially limiting the actions the .MIL could take. But our reliance on gee-whiz technology made ultra expensively by a handful of well connected contractors has now been revealed as a bad joke, and the forced dievershitty has damaged unit cohesion and made fighting forces unready and ineffective. All that has to be changed, and even with current leadership, I doubt it can be done in time to leave us well protected when the next big show kicks off, which many swamp creatures still in the government are working secretly – and not so secretly – to get going.
The Military Industrial Complex is FDR’s fault.
What happened was that during WWII he directed that many industries convert to making war material.
He told everyone that once the war was over, he would end that and make most of them go back to making civilian goods.
Well he dropped dead, Truman didn’t have half the strength or political pull as FDR AND the industrialists were making WAAY more money making war material than they were civilian stuff.
Thus THEY (along with some little hat financiers) decided to keep the US on a war footing and we have been so since WWII — freaking 85 years now.
They say that just the BS “War on Terror” in the last 25 years cost us 20 TRILLION !!
Think what we could have done with that money ? You could have bases on the Moon and Mars, great healthcare for everyone, etc.
I have stated for two decades that American Foreign Policy can be summarized in two words:
Endless War.
Our host’s essay & the responses above do confirm same.
We are a joke.
Remember the “left” complaining loudly about Trump’s tariffs in his first term? I do. Then when Biden came in, he didn’t cancel them, but instead increased them (and the same people who had been complaining just ignored that). Now Trump increases them again. This leads to my suspicion that the tariffs are planned GAE imperial policy, for which Trump is the fall guy to absorb any flack. Can you name any other Trump policy that wasn’t met with lots of resistance and interference? Only in this area does he appear to have a free hand. Why is that?
Surprisingly I have had good luck with cheap no name $10-$15 Wal Mart sneakers. Last me a long time. Through no particular planning, I had stocked up on them so that I have 3 or 4 pairs I haven’t worn yet. Convenient.
All shoes – at any price point – are made in China (or in Italy by Chinese) anyway. All those ‘exclusive’ labels employ ‘Chinese Italians’ now. It’s sickening. They and the ‘jeets are covering the earth.
I been thinking about making the switch to wallystore tennies, since I don’t really jump high or run fast anymore.
Similarly, I spent a few years working in a sawmill a while back-rough job that beat up gear pretty quick. I bought a $50 pair of name-brand “work” jeans and a pair of $14 jeans from the membership store at roughly the same time. The cheapo jeans outlasted the ones with a logo by a long ways. No more spendy logo’s for me. (frugal/prepper tip-I quit buying jeans new at the store altogether-I just buy khakis at the thrift store for work pants-usually durable, pockets are deep, they usually dry quickly, roomy for working in and they’re usually $5 or less. The last time I bought any they were 4 pairs for $1 at a place in town.)
“…during all of this…[,] we had the threat of the Soviet Union and nuclear war…”
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Based on the exposure by Elon And The Autistics, I suspect the Soviet Union was a paper-tiger excuse to plow trillions of America’s fedbux into unusable disposables.
We never needed to prove anything functioned as advertised, and most of it was obsolete before it was built.
The perfect scam.
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As the conflict in the Ukraine proves, American military equipment is unreliable and requires enormous investments of maintenance just to get to the battle.
And then, it automatically falls apart.
.
The SU was ten times worse.
I suspect the entire ‘Cold-War’ was propaganda to keep the Americans dumping their cash into rubbish equipment.
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As in Germany and Japan, low-level individual participants were skilled and motivated.
Unfortunately, the war machine is engineered to fail.
Who benefits from “Let’s You And Him Fight!”?
My bet would be that certain old familiar ‘foreign influence’ we cannot criticize.
Before anyone says Gulf War I, I don’t think it refutes anything you said. An air campaign against an enemy with no air force, followed by a 5 day ground war against an enemy who was surrendering as fast as he could. We still don’t really know how that gear would have fared against a near peer.
Bravo. Well said.