Changing American Perceptions of its Military?

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I found Wednesday's U.S. GDP report very interesting. For those who do not know, GDP for the fourth quarter of 2012 shrank by 0.1 percent. That said, economists and serious investors did not seemed concerned about it. Consumer spending and business investing grew pretty robustly, and one drag on growth, shrinking business inventories, is likely not to be repeated now that American spending is growing.

What struck me the most was the contraction in defense spending. Defense spending declined 22.2 percent, the largest drop since 1972. This is before possible sequestration, which would slash the military budget further.

I am mostly interested in what this means for American culture, and how it views the military. In the past, defense spending was a sacred cow, and was almost never cut. Now, there are talks about trimming the defense budget, and indeed, it appears to be happening on its own. It seems as if Americans accept this far more than, say, a cut to Social Security or Medicare, which is not currently at risk of budget cuts.

Could this signal a new era in America's relationship with its military? Is the U.S. entering a stage of demilitarization? Do you think these spending draw downs mean a genuine decline of the U.S. military, or that it will simply become more efficient and adapt?

i would like to see a consolidation of the military to defend the homeland instead of keeping up all these bases and foreign occupations.

Yes I do think we can deal with international terrorists without sending an entire army to kill what is basically a foreign gang/cult.

When I was a kid the military was advertised as a peace keeping force.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNdPPEwguDQ[/youtube]

It is certainly difficult to remain neutral if a trading partner is involved in war and their enemy torpedos our ships though. If a rising power is out of control bombing and invading neighboring nations i don't see a problem with military expansion and joining the fight. But after the fight if we keep up a big army I think we tend to look for other enemies to fight.

We might have to just change how we use our military or how we think of them in terms of deployment.

My thought, in a world where warfare keeps getting less conventional every year, why not just invest more in special forces and intelligence? Have fewer but better trained troops with better tech?

I don't think insanely drastic cuts are wise but if we're going to be making cuts there might be nothing wrong at all with smarter strategy rather than blunt force and $$.