Harkening back to a popular Reagan campaign image, the Soviet Union was a bear in the woods. We were told that some people could see the bear, others couldn’t, some people thought the bear dangerous. The resolution was to spend and spend until the bear collapsed.
I vaguely recall, somewhere around 1991, the first Bush President popularizing the phrase “peace dividend,” after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This dividend was described as the economic benefits of a decrease in defense spending. It would come with lower taxes for the middle class and a way to pay down the deficit that ballooning defense budgets had constructed during the Reagan years.
Then I heard about “rogue states,” a term applied by some international theorists to states that they consider threatening to the world's peace (or the US interests in remaining the dominant power in international affairs).
National security budget for 2021 is 740.5 billion.
Ole Mr. Pentagon had an army, E-I-E-I-O
And in that army he had a contractor, E-I-E-I-O
With a billion here
and a billion there,
Here a bill, there a ion,
Everywhere a billion.