Militarism

Militarism expounds that the foundation of a society's security is its military capacity, and claims that the development and maintenance of the military to ensure that capacity is the most important goal for that society. It consists of a preferential positioning of military considerations in policy by a nation or other political entity and preferential treatment for persons involved officially or tangentially with the military in service or supply. Such policy when adopted causes a militarization of the society in relation to other contemporaneous societies as the militarized society exerts its influence and power over them. These influences are most clearly observable in the history of nation-states and empires when they engaged in Imperialism or Expansionism; viz. Empire of Japan, British Empire, Nazi Germany, New Roman Empire of Mussolini, the expansion of the Russian SSFR into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and later reign of Stalin, Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein, and the United States during the period of Manifest Destiny and army reform.

References

• Ensign, Tod. America's Military Today. The New Press. 2005. ISBN 1565848837.
• Fink, Christina. Living Silence: Burma Under Military Rule. White Lotus Press. 2001. ISBN 1856499251.
• Huntington, Samuel P.. Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981.
• Shaw, Martin. Post-Military Society: Militarism, Demilitarization and War at the End of the Twentieth Century. Temple University Press, 1992
• Vagts, Alfred. A History of Militarism. Meridian Books, 1959.
• Western, Jon. Selling Intervention and War. Johns Hopkins University Press. 2005. ISBN 080188108.
• Barr, Ronald J. "The Progressive Army: US Army Command and Administration 1870-1914." St. Martin's Press, Inc. 1998. ISBN 0-312-21467-7.