Five reasons for the U.S. loving war: there is no real enemy

 B-1B of U.S. bomber squadron 28 being loaded precision-guided bombs.

China military:Why the United States has been constantly involved in war? Why do U.S. presidents have been doing the same thing? Why did the voters appear to dislike the war in 2008, 2009 and 2011, the performance of the United States when war was indifferent? Why is the issue of material wealth in the public finances of the two parties can watch the action in Libya, the president spent 100 million dollars a day? How the United States in the end? Recently, the U.S. Foreign Policy magazine summed up the reason why the United States kept the five most important reason for war, the original as follows:

1. Because we can(Yes, we can)

The main reason is the United States has strong military power, particularly weak in the face of the Libyan military. When you have hundreds of planes, laser-guided bombs, cruise missiles, the whole world in front of you like a target. Therefore, when some parts of the world's intractable problems, one can hardly resist "do something" impulse.

Just like the president's desk there is a huge red button, and his assistant walked in and said, "Mr. President, some bad things happen to some unfortunate person, but if you press the button, you can stop it . To do this, you may spend hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions, but we can always add a bit of debt. as long as you do not send ground troops, the public is likely to support you, at least for some time, and no one We can fight back - at least not anytime soon - because his opponent's strength is very weak. President, our vital interests will not be hurt, so you do not need to do anything. but if you do not press the button, and many innocent people will be killed. Mr. President, this is your choice to do. " Only a very tough, resolute president, or know how to give priority to important national issues and understand the uncertainty of war, the president always have to resist that temptation.

Of course, the previous president, Obama used the special status of the United States in the world for his resort to force in defense. As always, in his "American exceptionalism" argument, he expressed American values, the United States the obligations of freedom and so on. But the United States today is not really an exception to our values ​​(and certainly not our vast infrastructure, education, high standards, prosperity and development of the middle class, etc.), but the President of the President of restraint and control of military strength and political use of force power is increasingly weak.

2. United States has no real enemies

The second reason is that the United States unscrupulous end of the Cold War the United States in a very safe place. Western Hemisphere is not military power, we do not in any place "considerable strength of competitors" (although if we continue to foolishly squandered our capital, China may soon become a military power); the world, no country may not in itself injury cases against the United States.

We are facing the problem of terrorism headache, but, in fact, the risk of terrorist line may be exaggerated, due in part to the existence of terrorism is the result of interference in other countries, so we had better ways to resolve this through non-use of force problem. This is a very ironic question: the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to stay away from the real external threats (which is a good thing), the United States the use of adequate capital to foreign countries to eliminate the "demons" (This is not a good thing.) If Americans really want to protect land from the threat of a powerful enemy, we should not waste time and money in these things feel good about themselves, such as the Libyan operations. However, we have the advantage of very geopolitical position allows us to do these things, even if there is no strategic significance in the case.

3. Purely volunteer army

Let us be loyal to a third war because music is pure American volunteer army. Voluntary action by allowing those people to complete the military operations, public opposition to the war would be more likely to be under control. If most Americans need to perform military service, if the unfortunate children of the Wall Street bankers, the numbers drawn and sent out to war, Bush or Obama in Iraq and Afghanistan may unmanning so long? I very much doubt it.

By the way, I'm not saying all volunteers is a bad idea should be abandoned, we have many good reasons to support it. However, all volunteers of contemporary U.S. national security is the order of one of the characteristics, which makes the United States frequently resort to force to obtain political action possible.

4. Focus on the formulation of foreign policy

The fourth reason is that the formulation of foreign policy is bound to benefit "do something." Washington thinking on foreign policy neo-conservatives has been sent (they open that need to export "freedom", have never objected to any war) or liberal faction led intervention (they keen to resolve any problem by force, if they you can find some of the multilateral forces under the cover of it). Sometimes the liberal faction agreed to the U.S. intervention can not solve all the problems that, but they still think America is a "necessity" of the country, as much as they want us to solve the world's problems.

U.S. think tank, the Committee, public policy institutions and government agencies are development, advocacy, support the view of the world, although most of the time these institutions can not be what the U.S. should take action (or to what issues should be priority) to reach a consensus, but They all agree the U.S. should be a lot of use of force. In short, our foreign policy by the coexistence of the two parties to develop the social visionary, who took time to squeeze into the center of power for many years, came to power after the full implementation of their own pet projects. The development of our foreign policy have racked their office to make their own minds, they can not recommend restriction of military action, or proposed, if the United States to do less that the rest of the world will become better. After all, if you can not use military power to arbitrarily rebuild the world, in Washington, when the big man, what does that mean?

Compared with most Americans, these people are a group of wealthy, privileged, highly educated people, most of them will not be the policy implications of their support to (for example, with few exceptions, their children and do not join the army). Those who support military intervention is unlikely to face a serious financial crisis, or in the case of foreign war gets tough encounter long-term employment under threat, they can return to the think tank after the end of his term on the featherbed.

Incidentally, this activist foreign policy depends on the prevalence of right-wing cast by the United States had the most successful psychedelic surgery. From the mid-1960s, the U.S. conservative faction to carry out a sustained and successful political lobbying, making American voters believe that through tax support for domestic implementation of the project is a stupid waste, and through tax support for the construction of military facilities it is their patriotic duty, even though the U.S. military costs than the sum of the cost of other countries is even larger military, and these military facilities is not to protect the U.S. mainland, but primarily for the name of the people in other countries to war. In other words, Americans believe that the tax revenue to spend on things that benefit their residents (eg, good schools, health care, roads, bridges, high-speed rail, etc.) is wrong, but taxed to the Americans (though of course not to the richest Americans) and to spend money on the war abroad is indeed very reasonable. We believe. Moreover, it seems that there is no effective mechanism to allow the president launched the war and had selective reduction trade-off between domestic programs.

5. Congress has check out and left

Power to declare war in the hands of the U.S. Congress, not in the hands of the president, but since World War II, this power was often usurped. Although the Constitution on this issue can not be clearly explained, the modern president did not send troops to other countries feel constrained, and not even the Congress fully informed of what we may have to take secret action. So let us be proud of, by the constitutional "checks and balances between government agencies," the system can no longer operate in practice, this means that the U.S. military is firmly in control of the President and the hands of a few ambitious consultant . This is not to say that public opinion is not taken into account (for example, they also have opinion polls and political consultants), but it is difficult to be a powerful constraint.

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