Defense on a Diet.

MILITARY spending; MILITARY policy; MILITARY readiness; WORLD War I; WORLD War II; KOREAN War, 1950-1953; VIETNAM War, 1961-1975; COLD War, 1945-1991; UNITED States politics & government; UNITED States military history, 20th century; TWENTIETH century; HISTORY

The article discusses how the United States cut military spending in the twentieth century after five major conflicts ended: World War I; World War II; the Korean War; the Vietnam War; and the end of the Cold War after the fall of the Soviet Union. The author argues that a lack of military preparedness for World War II was caused by failures in diplomacy and threat analysis, not by low-level military spending. Other topics include the 1940 military plan, coined Plan Dog, penned by chief of naval operations Henry Stark to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt; post-World War II demobilization, reconstruction, and policy towards the Soviet Union; and the foreign polices of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and U.S. President Richard M. Nixon.