The state of the military: America has the most technologically formidable military in history, yet the burdens of serving as global policeman have left our nation perilously undefended.

For years, our national leaders and the media have told us that the United States is the last global superpower. Understandably, this has been a source of security and pride for many Americans. But in light of recent events this claim deserves some scrutiny--not only as to whether we are a superpower, let alone the only one, but also as to whether we should be one.

An important reality check took place on the morning of April 27, when the White House frantically mobilized to deal with what appeared to be a repeat of the 9/11 attacks. President Bush was hustled down to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a secure underground bunker. Vice President Cheney was spirited away  to an undisclosed location. Batteries of anti-aircraft missiles were primed; armed Secret Service agents were deployed around the White House grounds; and a Black Hawk helicopter was dispatched to confront the menace that had appeared on the radar.

As it turned out, the "menace" that had prompted this frenzied activity was an unusually dense and fast-moving cloud system that had materialized 30 miles south of Washington. This incident offered foreign newspapers plenty of cause for mirth. One Indian paper gleefully described how the cloud had sent President Bush "ducking for cover." A Scottish tabloid treated its readers to the headline, "Bush Runs From a Fluffy Cloud."

This isn't exactly the reaction we should expect from the top leadership echelon of the "sole remaining superpower." After all, the president has at his command the most fearsome military arsenal the world has ever seen, as well as the world's most technologically sophisticated intelligence services. Washington is riddled with security barriers, patrolled by heavily armed security personnel, and guarded by elite military assets. There is no doubt that the government over which Mr. Bush presides is able--as one high-ranking military official told reporter Bob Woodward--to "export death and destruction to the four corners of the earth in the defense of our great nation."

Shortly after the White House scare came another sobering reality check, this one indicating that the policy of exporting "death and destruction to the four corners of the earth" has severely eroded our ability to defend our homeland.

A classified report submitted to Congress by Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concluded that "the concentration of American troops and weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan limits the Pentagon's ability to deal with other potential armed conflicts," reported the New York Times. General Myers warned that the military confronts a "moderate" risk in its mission to protect the United States, and a "moderate, but trending toward significant" risk in preventing conflicts, including surprise attacks. Some senior military officials expressed concern that the report's findings could be perceived "by adversaries as an admission of vulnerability, and be seen as an invitation to adventurism that could lead to war," noted the Times.

While no earthly power could be considered invulnerable, it is clear that our nation remains excessively vulnerable, despite its much-vaunted superpower status.

From Republic to Superpower

A superpower is a state with the ability to influence events or project power on a global scale. This implies an entity with a huge economy, a large population, and strong armed forces, including air and space power and a considerable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (specifically, nuclear weapons).

During the period known as the Cold War, much of the world was aligned with either the U.S. or the Soviet Union, both of which were classified as superpowers. Although the Soviet Union had a first-rate arsenal, its economy was moribund, and its totalitarian ruling ideology had little if any international appeal. The United States, however, certainly measured up to this definition. The apparent demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 led most analysts and commentators to conclude that the United States is now the sole remaining superpower.

"Post-Soviet" Russia, it must not be forgotten, still possesses a huge nuclear arsenal, and thanks to subsidized transfers of industrial capacity from the West and a huge pool of what amounts to slave labor, Communist China is emerging as a major economic power. It has a small but growing nuclear arsenal, a large and modernizing military, and recently became the third nation to put a man into space. Thus Beijing should be considered an emerging superpower. Also, the European Union has an economy larger than that of the U.S., the capacity to build a world-class military (including nuclear weapons), and the technical means to exploit outer space. Thus the EU, as well, is a potential superpower. Moreover, while we currently have the best combination of superpower prerequisites, our government is rapidly depleting our domestic wealth and military strength in endless foreign conflicts.

Accordingly, the claim that the U.S. is the world's sole superpower is questionable at best. But there are even more basic questions to answer: is superpower status what our Founding Fathers envisioned for our nation, and is it constitutional?

Our Constitution provides for a military that can defend our borders and deter aggression, while also possessing the necessary naval power to defend our commercial rights and legitimate interests abroad. Within that commission, our nation's military was expected to be peerless--and it has been. Millions of brave and noble men have answered the summons to defend our nation, and hundreds of thousands have given their lives in its service.

But as our Founders understood, threats to our republic can come from excessive government growth, as well as from foreign aggressors. They also understood that foreign conflicts can be used to abet the growth of government beyond its constitutional limits. Having wrested independence from the globe-straddling British Empire--that era's equivalent of a superpower--the Founders offered abundant warnings against needless foreign intervention and excessively large military establishments, two defining characteristics of superpower status.

In his Farewell Address, George Washington, the very embodiment of our nation's honorable military tradition, pointedly warned against both of those superpower traits. "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world," he declared, advising citizens also to beware of "those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."

Thomas Jefferson struck a similar note in his first Inaugural Address, urging Americans to pursue "honest friendship with all nations--entangling alliances with none." On another occasion, Jefferson pointed out that "the spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force"--that is, the type of military establishment needed to pursue an interventionist foreign policy. James Madison, writing in 1795, offered similarly wise counsel. "Of all the enemies to public liberty," wrote Madison, "war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

A superpower, by definition, is a crusading state, equipped with a large standing military establishment, continually engaged in foreign conflicts, or continually preparing for them. Thus it is clear that while the framers of the Constitution intended for our country to have a strong and capable military, a superpower is exactly what they did not want the United States to become. We were intended to be a free and independent commercial republic--strong enough to defend our liberties, while expanding the frontiers of human freedom through honorable commerce and the strength of our example.

Sprawling "Defense" Establishment

For too many self-described conservatives, the measure of our nation's greatness can be found in the size of our military budget and establishment, without regard to how that military is being used. As a retired military officer, I take great pride in the strength of our military, and am inspired by the capable and courageous men and women who volunteer to serve. But I am gravely concerned about the ongoing misuse of our military to carry out missions that have nothing to do with the defense of our nation and its Constitution. The question isn't whether our nation should have the world's strongest military; it should. The question is how that military should be configured, and what kinds of missions it should serve.

Professor Andrew J. Bacevich of Boston University, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, observes that our government is committed "to maintaining military capabilities far in excess of those of any would-be adversary or combination of adversaries." For instance, while the U.S. Navy "maintains and operates a total of twelve large attack aircraft carriers, the once-vaunted [British] Royal Navy has none--indeed, in all the battle fleets of the world there is no ship even remotely comparable to a Nimitz-class carrier, weighing in at some ninety-seven thousand tons fully loaded, longer than three football fields, cruising at a speed above thirty knots, and powered by nuclear reactors that give it an essentially infinite radius of action."

Our Constitution instructs Congress to "maintain" a Navy as a means of protecting our nation, including defense of our citizens carrying out peaceful commerce abroad. Aircraft carriers are magnificently suited to that task. But it's worth asking: is our present Navy designed to protect our nation, or to "project power" in order to keep us entangled in foreign conflicts?

Similar questions should be asked about other elements of our hi-tech armed forces--such as our air power assets--and the deployment of our troops abroad.

"Today, the U.S. Marine Corps possesses more attack aircraft than does the entire Royal Air Force--and the United States has two other even larger 'air forces,' one an integral part of the Navy and the other officially designated as the U.S. Air Force," continues Dr. Bacevich. "Indeed, in terms of numbers of men and women in uniform, the U.S. Marine Corps is half again as large as the entire British Army--and the Pentagon has a second, even larger 'army' actually called the U.S. Army--which in turn also operates its own 'air force' of some five thousand aircraft."

Understandably, building and maintaining a military of this scope imposes huge costs on our economy. Adjusted for inflation, the 2002 Pentagon budget was 12 percent larger than the average Cold War-era defense budget, and U.S. military spending "exceeded by a factor of twenty-five the combined defense budgets of the seven 'rogue states' then comprising the roster of U.S. enemies," Dr. Bacevich observes. "[B]y some calculations, the United States spends more on defense than all other nations in the world together." The Pentagon's announced plans call for a budget exceeding the Cold War average by 23 percent in 2009--despite the absence, at present, of any so-called "peer competitor."

U.S. military personnel are garrisoned around the world in more than 140 bases, ranging from primitive "Lily Pad" outposts in Central Asia to sprawling, self-contained facilities like Bosnia's Camp Bondsteel. The most remarkable aspect of this extensive military system, Dr. Bacevich points out, is that "defense per se figures as little more than an afterthought. The primary mission of America's far-flung military establishment is global power projection"--not defense of our homeland, borders, and liberties.

While great emphasis has been placed on "power projection," critical gaps have been torn in our basic defense. For instance, our Air Defense systems have been almost completely abolished. Our strategic forces were slashed by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton abandoned our "launch on warning" policy, and his new policy to absorb the first strike has yet to be rescinded. President George W. Bush said he would honor a campaign pledge to reduce U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal unilaterally. And of course, while tens of thousands of U.S. personnel and billions of dollars are sent to Iraq to secure that nation's borders, our own borders gape wide open. The focus of our military policy is always directed abroad--rather than at what should be the most important issue, the immediate protection of our own nation and its citizens.

A Servile Empire

"That even apart from fighting wars and pursuing terrorists, U.S. forces are constantly prowling around the globe--training, exercising, planning, and posturing--elicits no more notice (and in some cases less) from the average American than the presence of a cop on a city street corner," concludes Dr. Bacevich.

Without formal notice, the United States has become a global empire--but an empire of a very peculiar type.

In a very real sense, a superpower is a servile empire. Where a traditional empire extracts wealth from its foreign provinces, a superpower actually subsidizes its satellites. Traditional empires were outgrowths of a specific national identity. A superpower, on the other hand, uses its power in the service of an ideological abstraction, such as global democracy, world socialist revolution, the new world order, etc. The open-ended crusades in which a superpower becomes involved eventually deplete both the nation's military strength and its domestic wealth.

Despite our nation's capacity to create immense wealth and its unprecedented military strength, it is simply impossible to maintain a global empire, let alone a servile one. Even prior to 9/11, the burdens of maintaining our superpower status were degrading our military's war-fighting capability.

The October 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly recounts the concerns expressed by a U.S. Army lieutenant stationed in Bratunac, Bosnia, as part of a multinational "peacekeeping" force. As a result of being used as "street-corner diplomats" and police, warned the lieutenant, the entire 3,500-soldier brigade "had lost its war-fighting ability and would require six months of retraining upon returning home."

In addition to dulling the combat edge of our combat units, missions like the UN-authorized occupation of Bosnia tie up much of the military's support infrastructure. The "tooth to tail" ratio of forward-deployed troops to their support personnel is 1:7--that is, seven stateside personnel are required to maintain a single serviceman overseas. As of December 2000, more than 260,000 U.S. service personnel were stationed abroad--in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Kosovo, Bosnia, various Latin American countries, and the Middle East.

Under current Pentagon doctrine, the United States is supposed to have a military capable of fighting two simultaneous wars in different parts of the globe. However, the occupation of Iraq--on top of ongoing commitments elsewhere--has left our military stretched to the breaking point. Under the "total force" concept developed following the Vietnam War, much of the burden of conducting the occupation has fallen on the National Guard and Reserve, many of whose members are much older than their active duty counterparts.

The part-time soldiers of the Guard and Reserve are flying fighter and tanker aircraft, doing much of the re-supply on the ground, serving in police and security details, and performing other hazardous duties. Many of these troops are in early middle age, and have family, business, and financial commitments that suffer as they serve second and third tours in Iraq. This is wreaking havoc with the home life of many and is straining the goodwill of employers who must do without them while keeping their jobs open for them. Also, it is stripping the country of the home guard that should be here if the United States is subjected to sudden attack.

The Army's "stop-loss" policy is severely affecting morale. Last December, eight soldiers filed lawsuits challenging the U.S. Army policy forcing them to serve in Iraq beyond the terms of their enlistment. About 7,000 troops at any one time are affected by this policy, which can keep them committed to their units for up to another 18 months. Our military is no longer an all-volunteer force when troops are forced to serve beyond their volunteer service commitment; the time added to the commitment amounts to conscription. The Army expects to mobilize about 4,400 Individual Ready Reservists who have finished active duty tours of four to six years but have not completed their eight-year commitment.

The implications of our ongoing imperial commitments were apparent to the U.S. Army lieutenant in Bosnia. In a conversation with Atlantic Monthly correspondent William Langewiesche, the officer "brought up the subject of empires, Roman, Spanish, British. He recognized an important difference between those dead empires and this new Pax Americana. The old empires were direct exercises in territorial domination, cultural subjugation, and the extraction of wealth. In contrast, the American reason for being in a place like Bosnia ... is to a large degree altruistic."

A Defense That Defends

One price of that "altruism" became apparent on the morning of September 11, 2001, when our nation's vulnerability to foreign attack was laid bare for the world to see. The attack occurred, we now know, despite intelligence information that should have enabled us to prevent it. Our ultra-modern, globe-spanning military, maintained at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars a year, did nothing to prevent lethal acts of warfare that killed thousands of people on our own soil.

Once again, this is not an indictment of those who serve in the military--a choice that always entails hardship and sacrifice, frequently involves danger and death, and should always be treated with grateful respect by the citizenry at large. The problem is that the sacrifices of our military personnel are being exploited by a policy-making elite that has perverted the purpose of our military.

Over the course of several decades, our military's mission has been transformed from one of national defense to one of promoting global governance through the UN and its affiliates (a process examined in the article on page 17). As Dr. Bacevich correctly observes, we must reorganize our military "explicitly for national defense." This would mean, first of all, "calling on allies possessing the ability to defend themselves to do just that, rather than contracting out that function to the Pentagon." It also means "bringing U.S. troops home from stations abroad where an immediate need for their presence no longer exists, withdrawing from the vast 'empire of bases' in which U.S. forces have become entrenched ever since World War II."

Our government's commitment to being a globalist superpower is unsustainable. The financial burdens, together with the financial burdens of our social-welfare state, are driving us into national bankruptcy. The steady expansion of government power threatens to extinguish what remains of our republican liberty. And the betrayal of those who serve in our military--who swear to defend our Constitution, not to uphold an empire--is a moral outrage.

George Wallace, a member of the National Council of The John Birch Society, is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and fighter pilot who saw action in the Vietnam conflict.