The Military

If military intervention isn't likely to be an effective way of achieving humanitarian objectives, then it would seem that we should only maintain enough military power to protect the country from acts of aggression.  We will want to take steps to make sure that we are governed the way we want to be governed.

However, I'm not sure even on this subject.  We want a liberal, democratic government.  By this, I don't mean left wing.  I mean that we should have elections and free speech.  In order to determine whether a military would be effective in securing these rights, we need to examine how likely it is that military means could be used to change the government of the United States into something else.

I don't think this is likely.  Any foreign invader would find it difficult to govern the country in any other way.  Government requires the consent, or at least the cooperation of the governed.  If the people could prevent any change in the government through non-violent protest, then there wouldn't be any point for any country to invade.  They wouldn't accomplish anything by doing so.

The first thing that an invader would have to do would be to shut down several communication networks.  These would likely be used by Americans to coordinate protests against the occupation.  Anyone who wanted to take cell phones and the internet away from all Americans would find this policy to be counterproductive.  If Americans weren't going to protest the occupation up until that point, which is extremely unlikely, then they would surely find that to be grounds for protest in and of itself.

So given that military action isn't necessary to protect our form of government at home, and isn't even effective in achieving more humane outcomes abroad, what is the point in having a military at all?  The military can provide logistical support for disaster relief and fight piracy on the high seas.  However, I suspect that there would be far more effective ways of providing these valuable services.

If we want to provide disaster relief, there is really no reason to have vehicles that are designed for the purpose of warfare to accomplish this objective.  It would seem that this could be accomplished much more efficiently with vehicles that were actually designed for this purpose and personnel who were exclusively trained for this purpose.  The same goes for piracy.  In fact it might be easier to convince countries that have different political ideologies to cooperate with us more if the resources that we were using to fight pirates were designed for this purpose, instead of the sort of resources that could also be used to invade them and change their government.

I believe that Madeleine Albright once asked what the point of having the most powerful military on the face of the earth was if we weren't going to use it.  I think this is a very important question to ask.