The Emerging American Garrison State

Milton J. Esman

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781349342525, 9780230339989
• eBook ISBN: 9781137093653
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The constitutional structure of the American federal government is no longer providing responsible and effective governance. To overcome the current paralysis in government, to resume effective management of its crippled economy and of its global empire, a new pattern of government is emerging, one that adheres to the earlier outlines of the garrison state. This volume takes account of the gradual measures that have already been taken to respond to the current paralysis outlines the new pattern of governance that will replace the failing institutions of the constitutional state.

1

What Is a Garrison State?

Abstract: Definitions of garrison state and of the American imperium. Principal features of the emergent American garrison state.

Esman, J. Milton. The Emerging American Garrison State. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137093653.

And what is the American imperium?

The garrison state as a “developmental construct” was first outlined in 1937 and 1941 by the political scientist, Harold Lasswell. As he visualized the garrison state, “the specialist on violence” (the soldier) is at the helm and organized economic and social life is systematically subordinated to the fighting forces.”¹ It becomes increasingly “dictatorial, governmentalized, centralized, and integrated,” as military priorities preempt a larger share of the nation’s resources and military values are accorded higher and higher levels of social prestige. Military officers as a ruling elite achieve expertise in the management of civilian affairs. Civil liberties are subordinated to the requirements of national security. Lasswell believed that the Japanese and fascist states, Germany and Italy, were displaying many of the properties of the garrison state as he conceived it and that the United States was in danger of evolving into a militarized garrison state.

As the Cold War heated up, as defense budgets grew to unprecedented peacetime levels, as suspected communists and fellow-travelers were harassed and driven from their jobs in Washington and in Hollywood, and as scientific research and industrial production came to depend increasingly on military patronage, a number of observers including former President Eisenhower expressed their concern that the United States might evolve or indeed was evolving into a militarized national security or garrison state.² These concerns seemed, however, to diminish with the prosperity of the 1950s, followed by the protests of the 1960s and wide-spread opposition to the Vietnam war. The nation adjusted comfortably to higher defense budgets, which leveled off at the easily sustainable level averaging 7 percent of the rapidly growing GNP. With the nuclear stalemate, threats to the homeland seemed remote. Even the Vietnam War, with the military draft, evoked few fears of military takeover of the Federal government. Indeed, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon displayed greater enthusiasm for fighting and winning in Vietnam than the generals who had to manage that unwinnable conflict. As a result, interest in the concept of the garrison state went into deep hibernation. Writing in the year 2000, the political scientist, Aaron Friedberg, argued that the powerful anti-government strain in the American political culture has prevented and will continue to prevent the emergence of a garrison state in the United States.³

The centralized and militarized garrison state is no stranger to western experience. Sparta in ancient Greece was a perfect model of the garrison state, as were the Mongol empire of Genghis Khan during the 12th century, imperial Prussia during the 18th century, and Napoleonic France early in the 19th century. Garrison states tend to emerge to defend a polity from perceived external threats. Having mobilized their military resources, the heads of garrison states then succumb to the temptation to direct their military strength against weaker neighbors. Garrison states pass from history only when they suffer decisive military defeat, for example Napoleonic France in 1814 and 1815.

It was the events of 9/11 and their aftermath that rekindled my interest in the concept of the garrison state and my belief that the United States is heading in that direction. The threat of additional terrorist attacks on the vulnerable homeland where civilians would be the principal casualties; the presidential commitment to a global war on terrorism, combined with the imperative need to preempt and defend attacks on the homeland; extravagant claims of wartime presidential powers combined with governmental secrecy and the shrinking of individual rights and civil liberties; the continuing need to defend the American global imperium which provided safe locations for nuclear weapons; the militarization of foreign policy; military requirements preempting the nation’s resources; together these portend a future of unrelenting readiness for war and of endless warfare. These are preconditions of a garrison state.

There has been a lengthy tradition of thinking and writing, mostly from leftist perspectives, about the American Leviathan and the militarization of American foreign policy.⁴ These authors have less to say about the effects of these developments on the structure of the American state and its consequences for America’s citizens. The garrison state is a consequence of the expansion and militarization of America’s polity and their effect on the structure of the American state and its effects on the American public. It is a more precise concept of the American state that emerged from the post-9/11 warfare than those employed by American pundits and scholars. Once the garrison state has been consolidated, it facilitates the management of America’s global imperium and the endless warfare that its maintenance requires.

The collapse of the American economy featuring insolvency of major financial institutions, high, persistent levels of unemployment, and unprecedented levels of home mortgage foreclosures confronted the incoming Obama administration with an economic crisis that preempted its attention and energies during the early months of his presidency. Nevertheless, he ordered the closing of the infamous Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons, the gradual withdrawal of combat units from Iraq, and the strengthening of the US presence in Afghanistan. He soon found, however, that Guantanamo could not be closed because of local and congressional opposition to the transfer of detainees to stateside prisons.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that war inevitably results in the repression of civil liberties, Charles Tilly has argued that the evolution of welfare states in Western Europe and North America has been the legacy of warfare.⁵ When the war-making state requires contributions of manpower or money from its citizens it must, in return, reward them with benefits. In the American case, the rewards of the victorious Unionists in the Civil War were free land in the West, land-grant colleges for ambitious youngsters, and pensions for the widows of veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic. The GI Bill which financed college education and subsidized home purchases was the crux of the state’s rewards to World War II veterans.

In its war on terrorists and its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the G.W. Bush administration demanded nothing from its public. The Army had become an all-volunteer force, thus there was no draft of manpower. Nor were citizens asked to pay for these wars. Instead, taxes were actually reduced and the wars were financed largely by borrowing from foreign sources, thus imposing no obvious burden on the contemporary public. The emergent American garrison state, following this pattern, would have no need to extend welfare benefits, since it asked nothing of its citizenry. Nevertheless, it provided generous prescription drug benefits to senior citizens under an extension of Medicare. It did, however, imprison, detain for indefinite periods and without charges, and torture suspected terrorists, “enemy combatants,” and their sympathizers as described in chapter 5 of this study.

The American imperium, what is it?

As a former colony that had to fight to win its independence, Americans have opposed colonialism and imperialism. They cheered the independence movement of the Spanish-American colonies in the 1820s and issued the Monroe Doctrine, warning Europeans not to encroach on the Americas.⁶ Except for its misadventure in the Philippines, the United States declined to participate in the frenzied 19th century European territorial grabs and partitions of Asia and Africa. The doctrine of “self-determination of peoples” evoked by President Woodrow Wilson provided the slogan that justified the successful 20th century independence movement by European colonies in Asia and Africa.

Among the Founders of the Republic there were those who visualized and prophecized an imperial destiny for their handiwork. It would, however, in Jefferson’s phrase, be an empire of liberty. As it expanded, it would confer the blessings of liberty on its newly acquired citizens. This idea was later converted into the principle of an empire for liberty. The United States would be the global torch-bearer for liberty, extending its blessings to exotic nations and peoples beyond its borders, by example where possible and by warfare where necessary.⁷ Thus, in 1917, President Wilson took the country to war to “make the world safe for democracy.”

America’s imperium was not built on the conquest, occupation, and annexation of overseas territories. A few of its bases, including Guantanamo in Cuba and Okinawa in Japan were acquired by military action. The great majority of its global network of army, naval, air, and intelligence bases and stations were negotiated with friendly governments, in most cases, during the Cold War, and linked by ultra-modern communications and information systems.⁸

Its main purpose at the time was to enforce the containment policy against the Soviet Union.⁹ It was also intended to provide the US with a global reach, enabling it to deploy its nuclear weapons strategically, to protect the sea lanes and airways that remain essential to the maintenance of the US-led liberal, free trading world economic order, and to insure access to essential raw materials, such as Middle-east petroleum. As circumstances changed, some bases were abandoned, others acquired. Even after the Cold War ended in 1991 with the historic American victory, the overseas network of military bases remained intact and even expanded. In 2000, prior to 9/11, there were 267, 000 American defense personnel stationed in 139 overseas bases. This network makes it possible for the US to intervene in a timely way to assert and defend its global interests. It enabled the US to intervene speedily and successfully in the first Gulf expedition in 1990 and in the post-9/11 operations in Afghanistan beginning in 2001.¹⁰ Notwithstanding its unique global reach, the American military proved not to be omnipotent as demonstrated by its struggles against guerrilla forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The United States has been formally at war since the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Wartime justifies enhanced secrecy on matters affecting national security, encroachments of the state on civil liberties, and centralization of power in the presidency. There is little prospect that the state of war will be ended any time soon, even when the last of our combat forces have been withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. US interests are now global, and so is its reach. Despite the loss of respect and prestige resulting from its defiance of the United Nations, its misadventure in Iraq, and its practice of torture, its empire continues to attract well-wishers and collaborators who share its values or benefit from the security or economic order that it maintains. But it also attracts enemies who regard the American military presence in their area as illegitimate, provocative, threatening, or potentially hostile. Some are states, such as Iran and Syria; others are non-state entities, such as Al Qaeda, whose leaders claim to be offended by America’s military encroachment on Muslim lands, even when its armed forces have been invit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1  What Is a Garrison State?
• 2  Historical Antecedents
• 3  Origins and Consolidation of the Imperium
• 4  The Shock of 9/11 and Its Consequences
• 5  The Five Dimensions of the American Garrison State
• 6  The Autonomous Commander-in-Chief
• 7  The Threat to Civil Liberties
• 8  American Demographics and the Garrison State
• 9  The Garrison State and America’s Future
• Selected Readings
• Index