Authors in the News: Mark Helprin on America's Dangerous Rush to Shrink Its Military Power

Contributor Mark Helprin had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week in which he called out a new, new threat to freedom: our national instinct to shrink our military force. This is not a left vs. right issue, nor is it a brass vs. civilian issue. Helprin claims that the calls for military cutbacks are coming from all political parties, from the press, from academia, from career public servants, top military leadership, and perhaps from a vocal majority of Americans. They all claim that drastic cutbacks are necessary and unavoidable.

Of this claim Helprin writes:

"But this takes no account of the nature of our commitments, the fading contributions of our allies, geography, this nation's size and that of its economy, conscription or its absence, purchasing power parity, exchange rate distortions, the military trajectories of our rivals individually or in combination, and the masking effects of off-budget outlays and unreported expenditures. Though military spending comparisons are of lesser utility than assessing actual capabilities, they are useful nonetheless for determining a country's progress relative to itself."

Subscribers to the journal can see the whole article here.