The U.S. military invents new threats to justify its size after the Cold War.

Evidence

Since the end of the Cold War, part of the problem has been that, lacking a superpower rival, the U.S. military has gone looking for new monsters and new enemies. This resembles what some call the “firefighter problem”: in an era when there are fewer and fewer fires for firefighters to deal with, they have tended to look for other things to do. Most firefighters today spend little of their time actually fighting fires, while their help in medical emergencies and other work often comes at great and inefficient expense. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1055

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• SEED: An article angle: bureaucratic mission-creep as an institutional driver of perpetual war — comparing military to fire departments’ scope expansion.

Related

• Without a superpower rival the military invents new missions to justify itself (similarity 0.92)
• Huge base construction implies the military plans to keep fighting abroad. (similarity 0.79)
• Post-1996 terror attacks drove the military to close small bases and enlarge fortress-like megabases (similarity 0.78)
• The U.S. military network has expanded geographically despite closing giant Cold War bases (similarity 0.78)