William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[AmericanPride]

Considering that this is the way the military was recruited prior to World War II, I'd wager that the country will survive. As soon as you look at the pre-wartime draft military you see this sort of thing. And as for small manpower? Simply not true. The cost per solider is obviously much higher, but in terms of numbers the army has indeed been much smaller than it is currently, and for most of its organizational history.

If you study the history of the military in the United States, you'd realize that what we're seeing now is a return to normal as it existed prior to the Cold War.

The issue here is that the pre-WW2 and post WW2 Americas are worlds apart. So in some ways we may be returning to historical norms in the long view of American history regarding the size of the force, but at the same time we are not returning to the pre-WW2 limited international engagements. Before World War II, there was no NATO, the US did not have combatant commands or bases in 100+ countries, or material interests in nearly every country around the world. Nor did the United States have a self-ascribed global police function as the centerpiece of the international political order. I don't think it's useful with these two different periods to use the pre-WW2 military as a baseline for measuring the current one.

EDIT: Also, let's talk about what 'normal' really is. It's been 237 years since 1776. It was 214 years between 1776 and 1991, 51 years of which included World War II and the Cold War (1940 - 1991). That's 23.8% of American history. Adding the 23 years between 1991 and 2014, the proportion increases to 31.2% of American history. So almost a third of American history has had a relatively large, permanent standing army. How long will it take for that to be considered the new normal?