One of the more alarming things about US president Donald Trump’s destructive war against Iran is how little planning seems to have gone into it. Trump’s team seemed unable to predict the terribly destabilising effects on the region or the world economy or that it would be difficult to replace Iran’s regime. Yet he is hardly the first American president to be tempted into a disastrous war by the bloated size of the American military.

As the old adage goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And the United States has an enormous hammer. It spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on its military, which incredibly is more than the combined military budgets of the next seven largest spenders. China, which ranks second in military spending, spends less than one-third of what the US does.

This elevated level of military spending began during the 1940s. The US has always been a violent country, but before the second World War, it was far less militarised than Europe. When the Nazis invaded France, the US had only the 19th largest military in the world. It ranked below even the Netherlands. Fighting that war required that the US become an “arsenal of democracy”, as President Franklin Roosevelt declared.

And yet after the second World War ended, America never demilitarised. The cold war against the Soviet Union and its desire for global dominance saw American military spending balloon and its military bases spread to dozens of countries. In his famous 1961 farewell address, president Dwight Eisenhower warned of the new power of the American “military-industrial complex”. The former second........

© The Irish Times