By Ken Morris
U.S. citizens who choose to live in pacifist Costa Rica might prefer to celebrate this Nov. 11 as Armistice Day rather than Veterans Day.
Actually, Veterans Day started out as Armistice Day.
Established by President Woodrow Wilson at the end of the First World War, Armistice Day commemorated the soldiers who gave their lives in that tragic crusade to “save the world for democracy.” In Wilson’s words, the day signaled America’s “sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.”
This meaning of the holiday held firm for the next quarter of a century, and in 1938 Congress even rededicated Armistice Day “to the cause of world peace.”
However, in 1954 the U.S. Congress renamed Armistice Day Veterans Day, and dedicated it to all veterans. Although the change allowed veterans of the United States’ other wars, especially the Second World War, to be honored on the Nov. 11 holiday, this was unnecessary. Decoration Day, begun to honor Union troops in the Civil War, was already evolving into Memorial Day, also dedicated to all veterans.
Beneath the broadening meanings of the holidays thus unfortunately lurked a more fundamental shift in U.S. military policy, namely the rise of a new U.S. posture of permanent militarization.
Historical trends in the United States’ defense spending and military participation rates illustrate this new position. Prior to the Second World War, defense spending hovered around 1 percent of GDP, and military participation rates were a similar 1 percent of the population. After the Second World War, defense spending remained a minimum of 7 percent of GDP (1948) throughout the Cold War and never dropped below 3.6 percent after it (1999). The number of soldiers and veterans likewise rose to a current 10 percent of the population.
America’s mid-century militarization quickly led to wars that rivaled the scale of the First World War. The U.S. actually spent a higher percentage of its much larger GDP on defense in the last year of the Korean War (1953) than it did during the First World War, and the number of Americans who died in the Korean and Vietnam Wars (112,000) nearly matched the number who died in the First World War (117,000).
For a long time, the Cold War was used to justify the increased militarization. This justification, though, faltered when the Cold War ended and militarization failed to decline. Even the 1999 defense budget – the lowest since the 1930s as a percentage of GDP – was by that measure three times higher than the defense budget prior to the Second World War, and over ten times higher when adjusted for growth in GDP. Today, although accounting for “only” 6 percent of GDP, adjusted for GDP growth, military spending is higher than it ever was during the Cold War.
A main justification for the continued militarization of the United States is of course that the U.S. has once again been drawn into wars not of its own choosing. This justification, however, stumbles on the obvious inconsistency that the U.S. has started some pretty big wars, like the Iraq War. In fact, American soldiers have been deployed in no less than 28 countries – from Afghanistan to Zaire – since the end of the Cold War, and the U.S. continues to maintain 820 military bases in 135 countries.
In Costa Rica, despite the popular idea that the U.S. military defends the country, there has not been one instance in over six decades when Costa Rica has relied upon the U.S. military for its defense. In fact, President Oscar Arias kicked the U.S. military out of the country during his first term since it was drawing Costa Rica into conflict with Nicaragua.
The War on Drugs, the pretext for Costa Rica’s recent enhanced approval of U.S. military forces here, has not benefited from U.S. military involvement either. Costa Rica’s new chief prosecutor, Jorge Chaverría, flatly declared the War on Drugs a failure. With respect to Plan Colombia, a Cato Institute analysis shows that after spending $5 billion over nine years the policy has not significantly reduced the flow of drugs into the U.S.
Many in the U.S. as well as in other countries view the U.S. military as a force for good in the world, and there are instances in which this view has merit. Yet, with the U.S. currently accounting for 43 percent of all global military spending (over seven times more than the second-highest spender, China) and its record of misadventures rising, it would appear that Americans are investing more faith in its military than is warranted.
If U.S. citizens today ask themselves the same question that they asked themselves at the end of the First World War – Is the world any “safer for democracy” as a result of our military efforts? – The honest answer is likely to be either “no” or at least “not much.”
Accordingly, U.S. citizens in Costa Rica might want to take the symbolic step of reclaiming Armistice Day from Veterans Day – and once again dedicating it to world peace.
This symbolic act would bring no more dishonor to America’s heroic soldiers and veterans today than it did those of the First World War. It would, however, remind us that militarization is no substitute for “sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.”
Ken Morris is a U.S. expat living in San Pedro, Costa Rica. He is the author most recently of “Unfinished Revolution: Daniel Ortega and Nicaragua’s Struggle for liberation.”
