The first job of a bureaucrat is to keep his job. The military still, despite the disaster the last 20 years, enjoys incredibly higha confidence ratings - much more than use car salesmen. I do it pretty hard in this book, arguing doit's, you know, what we get for this money? It hasn't been very good, particulary in years. And so it's going to be really hard too. You can't go against the military. But i don't know if i's going to have an effect, though.
In this conversation based on his new book, The Stupidity of War, political scientist John Mueller argues that American foreign policy since 1945 has been one long miscue; most international threats — including during the Cold War — have been substantially exaggerated. The result has been agony and bloviation, unnecessary and costly military interventions that have mostly failed. With international war in decline, complacency and appeasement become viable diplomatic devices and a large military is scarcely required.