Without a superpower rival the military invents new missions to justify itself

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

• XREF: The mission-creep logic parallels the March of Dimes post-polio example the paragraph right after gives, and echoes the sunk-cost institutional dynamics seen in the firefighter analogy literature.