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During [a] late Civil War dinner party given by Americans in Paris, these were some of the toasts proposed: 1st gentleman: ‘Here’s to the United States, bounded on the north by British America, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, on the east by the Atlantic, on the west by the Pacific Ocean.’ 2nd gentleman: ‘Here’s to the United States, bounded on the north by the North Pole, on the south by the South Pole, on the east by the rising sun, on the west by the setting sun.’ 3rd gentleman: ‘Here’s to the United States, bounded on the north by Aurora Borealis, on the south by the procession of the equinoxes, on the east by primeval chaos, and on the west by the day of judgment.’1 La Follette could not have imagined, even in a nightmare, the full cost of the National Security State that the United States has become. According to the 2012 Base Structure Report, “The Department of Defense manages a global real property portfolio that consists of more than 555,000 facilities . . . located on over 5,000 sites worldwide and covering over 28 million acres.”2 The U.S. military claims to be operating 666 foreign bases in 40 countries around the world.3 This tally does not include many unlisted sites, such as the 400 bases in Afghanistan. Depending on how the much-debated term base is defined, the number may be well over 1,000.4 The official Pentagon budget for 2013 calls for $613.9 billion, including $88.5 billion for war funding in Afghanistan as well as “the reset of equipment and redeploying from Iraq.”5 The 2013 Pentagon budget, however, does not include nuclear weapons–related activities , weapons and training assistance to foreign militaries around the world, payment for military operations by our allies and international organizations, 452  Conclusions funding for the CIA and National Security Agency, disability pensions and medical care for veterans, counterterrorism operations, pensions for U.S. military retirees and former civilian Department of Defense employees, and “miscellaneous ” expenses. If these other costs are considered, the total annual bill for national security funding nears a trillion dollars.6 A recent study estimated that the long-term price of the Iraq War alone would reach three trillion dollars.7 The actual dividend to the American people for their investment in Operations Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn consists principally of such satisfaction as can be derived from the spectacle of corrupt war contractors enriching themselves.8 La Follette did see, however, the militarist direction in which the America of Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge was moving, as well as the role played in the process by the economics of imperialism. He certainly would have recognized in the 2013 Pentagon budget assertion of how “[t]he U.S. will continue to lead global efforts with capable allies and partners to assure access to and use of the global commons” the fulfillment of Wilson’s grand rhetorical vision of a world made safe for democracy.9 The individuals who can afford to use the global commons are generally in the market for oil wells, mineral deposits, and the lowest possible labor costs. The term democracy has concealed the prestidigitations of high finance in turning the world into an investment preserve whose voracious exigencies and prerogatives under the auspices of globalization have produced an era of acute economic and political crisis, high unemployment, labor exploitation, and worsening environmental degradation . According to the Pentagon, “Working with like-minded nations, the U.S. has created a safer, more stable, and more prosperous world for the American people, our allies, and our partners around the globe.” Safety, stability, and prosperity are not the first words that come to the minds of most people in thinking about today’s world, but the Pentagon’s description of an Americanprotected global commons faithfully reflects the condition and prospects of the government’s top shareholders. In criticizing Wilson and his postwar successors, La Follette claimed that this new America differed less and less from the Soviet Union. Both countries would fail and for essentially the same reason, he thought. Neither of them could be called democratic. Both were oligarchies professing different creeds, to be sure, but privileged American and Soviet elites exercised controlling power in their respective societies. Both had a faith in force that did not allow room for the competing faith of democracy. La Follette judged the failure of America to be even more...

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