Donald Trump may have teased 2016-election voters with intimations of military retrenchment and nonintervention (like his two predecessors), but many people knew he was not to be taken seriously. Let’s not forget that Trump also declared himself the most “militaristic” candidate in the large Republican primary field.
In his first year in office, Trump has hiked (with Congress’s enthusiastic help) the military (not “defense”) budget by an amount that exceeds Russia’s entire military budget: $81 billion versus $70 billion. He has provoked Iran and North Korea. H e’s doubled down everywhere his two immediate predecessors became embroiled militarily, including Syria (to name a few exampls). And now he wants a military parade.
Of course the Trumpsters will love it, writes Sheldon Richman. But so might many others who have zero stomach for Trump. The safest thing to do in America today is to express reverence for the military.
Decades of hysteria about imagined enemies—not to mention the pro-military propaganda in the government’s schools, the cinema, and the news media—has extinguished the antimilitarist spirit that animated some previous generations, writes Richman. We must find a way to rekindle it.
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