The US military has often been referred to as the most powerful military force ever on the earth. This characterization is undoubtedly true. However, this raises a very important question. How did a nation, which once depended on public militia to fight against the British, today spends more on its military than the next top ten nations combined? More importantly, what role does this powerful entity play in the political and social life of the United States. Rachel Maddow, a journalist and anchor at MSNBC, wrote the book “Drift – The Unmooring of the US Military Power” in order to examine how the US military transformed from its humble origins to massive behemoth today. She has also tackled the history of the US involvement the wars and how…show more content… Despite suffering from a strategic defeat in the Iraq War, the United States engaged in bombing Libya in order to overthrow the Gaddafi regime. The United States is currently also engaged in the fight against ISIS, with hundreds of US troops in Iraq acting as advisors to the Iraqi army. The parallel between current scenario and the beginning of the Vietnam War has not been lost to most analysts who worry that the United States will be sucked into another war in the Middle East. The United States has also spent five hundred million dollars, in a secret program by the CIA, in supporting the rebels against Syrian regime despite having no clear idea about the goals of the rebels (Patton et al 154). On the other side of the world, the United States is currently engaged in an active policy of containment, similar to one pursued against the Soviet Union, of the China by forming alliances with its neighbors. President Obama referred to this move as “pivot to the East” (Kaplan 94). This policy will undoubtedly lead the United States into an arms race and tension with China, its current largest trading…show more content… The fear of another 9/11, provoked by these fabricated reports, allowed the US president to secure Congress’s approval for the Second Iraq War. When the US troops finally occupied Iraq, no weapons of mass-destruction were found and the fabricated hoax was unearthed (Keegan 178). However, by then it was already too late. The United States was sucked into a destructive war, that not only led to its strategic defeat in the Iraq and deaths of more than four thousand American soldiers along with more than 500,000 Iraqis, but also created a lack of sufficient forces in Afghanistan allowing the Taliban to recover its lost footing in the Western regions (Keegan 183). At present, it seems likely that the Afghanistan government will face serious security issues after the withdrawal of the US military forces when forced to engage with the resurgent Taliban in the future (Weiner 146). The above analysis, along with the examples, makes it clear that the tendency of the United States to get engaged in continuous wars is a product of the structural powers of the President and not merely a choice attributed to the personal character of the President. With the structural nature of the Presidential powers heavily biased towards involvement in the wars, as opposed
