Guns for Butter: The Rationale for U.S. Military Primacy

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Over the past seven decades, the U.S. government has consciously and consistently spent disproportionate resources to pursue, establish, and maintain military superiority relative to all other states within the international system. Given an ostensibly benign security situation, such preponderance of power appears puzzling. The speaker proposes that U.S. leaders desire to acquire military primacy because they believe it to be necessary for enhancing their country's long-term wealth.

This theory-building exercise incorporates findings and propositions from scholarship on democratic and American politics, classical realism, economic interdependence, the logic of power, the utility of force, and nuclear policy. The bottom line is that in the largest capitalist and democratic economy, leaders have reason to believe that only overwhelming military force can render credible swift victories, thereby helping them attain their preferred goals without most war actually being fought.

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