Story

The Warfare State

AH article image

Authors: Bruce D. Porter

Historic Era: Era 10: Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

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July/August 1994 | Volume 45, Issue 4

Alexis de Tocqueville observed in 1835 that America had no neighbors and hence no enemies. Indeed, the New World Republic was the ultimate island power, with the Atlantic Ocean providing a protective moat nearly a hundred times as wide as the English Channel. The German philosopher Hegel, writing at about the same time as Toque, cited this isolation as one reason “a real State”—a powerful, centralized, European-style state—could never exist in America. Without constant threat, without the necessity of maintaining a standing army, the American republic was doomed to weakness and obscurity.

Hegel’s forecast of the American destiny was totally wrong, of course, but only because he could not foresee the remarkable extent to which the United States would become embroiled in wars, its isolation notwithstanding. Today, as we look back through more than two hundred years of history, it is clear that America’s wars have profoundly shaped its political course. War has been the primary impetus behind the growth and development of the national government, the lever by which Presidents and other national officials have bolstered the power of the state in the face of tenacious popular resistance. The United States has been at war for only thirty-four years, or about a sixth of its history. Yet during those wars or in their immediate after-maths, all but five cabinet departments and the vast majority of smaller agencies came into being. War made the American state.

One pattern has repeated itself plainly throughout American history: During war, the national government grows strong and powerful; between wars, it recedes in power and size, but never back to its pre-war level. The overall trend is upward.
 

War also helped forge an American nation. Our splendid isolation made the United States a natural sanctuary for generations of the most independent-minded, anti-statist Europeans and Asians, many of them fleeing war and despotism in their homelands. The diverse national and ethnic origins of the American people made the collective efforts entailed by war important in giving America a consciousness of itself as a unified nation. The historian Geoffrey Perrett argues that war for America was “a factor as important as geography, immigration, the growth of business, the separation of powers, the inventiveness of its people, or anything else” in shaping a unique American identity. War united Americans of diverse origins both on the battlefield and on the home front. It is no coincidence that every constitutional extension of the suffrage in American history—the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-sixth Amendments—took place during or right after a great war.

Five wars in particular shaped the political destiny of the United States: the War of Independence, the Civil War, the two world wars, and the Cold War, which includes the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Other wars—the War of 1812, the war with Mexico, the Spanish-American War, and the Persian Gulf War—had lesser, but not insignificant, effects on the institutions and form of