Current threats might include in particular the proliferation of nuclear weapons and terrorism as well as international crime, policing the oceans, the antics of cybergeeks, securing energy sources, climate change, economic challenges, and the protection of allies. Singly or in groups, these problems and issues scarcely justify the maintenance of a large military force in being, and complacency is, in general, a more fitting response than agitated, and particularly militarized, alarm. Proliferation has been of little practical consequence, and alarmed efforts to prevent it have proved to be very costly and may hamper the forging of a permanent normalization in Korea. Counterterrorism policy has been driven primarily by public opinion, not by an apt analysis of the threat. Cybergeeks may be able to commit sabotage, steal intelligence, or spread propaganda, but any military disruptions are likely to be minor and call more for a small army of counter-cybergeeks than for a large military. One possible use of American military forces in the future would be to deploy them under international authority to police destructive civil wars or to depose vicious regimes. However, this would not require a large number of troops and is unlikely to become routine.

It really seems time to take into account the consequences of the fact that countries, particularly leading or developed ones, reversing the course of several millennia, no longer envision international war as a sensible method for resolving their disputes. Indeed, the aversion to international war or the rise of something of a culture or society of international peace that has substantially enveloped the world should be seen as a causative or facilitating independent variable. International war seems to be in pronounced decline because of the way attitudes toward it have changed, roughly following the pattern by which the institution of formal slavery became discredited and then obsolete. Under the circumstances, there is potential virtue in the traditionally maligned diplomatic techniques of complacency and appeasement for dealing with international problems. The phenomenon asuggests that there is little justification for the continuing and popular tendency to inflate threats and dangers in the international arena—even to the point of deeming some of them to be “existential.” In addition, although problems certainly continue to exist, none of these are substantial enough to require the United States (or pretty much anybody) to maintain a large standing military force for dealing with them.