How We Became a Nation of Warriors

How We Became a Nation of Warriors: Over the Last Century, Militarism Has Warped our Foreign Policy — And Our Soul. Can the Budget Crisis Save Them? By Stephen Glain at Salon – a condensed excerpt from Stephen Glain’s new book, State vs. Defense: The Battle to Define America’s Empire, available August 2 from Crown.

BLUF: “State vs. Defense, the century-old competition between those who would confront America’s overseas challenges through diplomatic means and those who would subdue them by force of arms, is all but decided. The economic and political resources commanded by the latter group are vast and powerful, while the former has been reduced to a cadre of supplicants forced to beg before the lavish table of the national security state. Such a lopsided state of affairs has been abetted by a citizenry generally uninterested in the policies carried out in its name and un—to share in the burden of their prosecution. Only now, with the specter of bankruptcy looming over the national accounts, are some in Washington daring to contest the bill for, if not the value of, unchecked global hegemony.”