 August 15, 1945, throngs of Americans are rushing city streets to celebrate good news. With the last of the Nazi threat beaten at Berlin a few months earlier, Americans had just gotten news that their final major enemy, Japan, would surrender. And with President Truman's announcement accepting it, the planet's deadliest war had just stopped. The United States has seen plenty of wars since World War II, but none of them have ended with celebrations like these. That's partly due to the fact that few, if any, wars since then have been clear American victories. But mostly it's because, these days, our wars don't end at all. American leadership is not just respected, it is required. To better understand the American forever war, we need to go back to the founding. If you look at the way that the founders talked about war and permanent military establishments, they were quite adamant on this point. If the federal government was allowed to have a standing permanent army, that it would be a threat. The First Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence both spoke of standing armies being one of the reasons for wanting to separate from England in the first place. This skepticism toward a permanent wartime posture mostly held for much of America's early history. Wars ended decisively and servicemen and women went back into the labor force. And then things changed. Wars were accustomed to living a relatively safe and secure existence and suddenly they felt very vulnerable. Now, we must be ready for a new danger, the atomic bomb. Worried about what this new American fear might license, President Dwight Eisenhower gave a now prophetic speech. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military industrial complex. By 1961, Eisenhower had seen the Cold War last over a decade. The length of the war was producing a permanent standing army just as the founders had feared, giving rise to a military industrial complex made up of three key groups that faced strong incentives to keep America at war. The first is a small number of American companies that depend heavily upon the manufacture of military implements. These arms manufacturers are just like any other private company and want to see increased profits that they can only get from a nation at war. The second is Congress. Congressional candidates want to win elections and to do that they need money and support, which they can get in part from large and growing constituencies employed by the defense industry. And the third is the bureaucracy. The defense bureaucracy is just like any other bureaucracy. It wants to see its budgets and prestige grow and wars can give them that. Eisenhower's fear was that a protracted wartime footing would cultivate these three groups dependent on war and in turn encourage their support for war. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. There was a CNN article, the headline was Army to Congress, thanks but no tanks. The Pentagon doesn't want it, the soldiers don't need it, but Congress will give it to them anyway. Row upon row of M1 Abrams tanks, you the taxpayer are still likely to be on the hook. General Odierno, chief of staff of the army at the time testified before Congress that we don't need these tanks. He's fairly explicit on this point and effectively Congress just said, yeah, we understand what you just said, we don't agree and we're going to buy them anyway. Is it national security or is it congressional job security? This kind of careless spending is pretty common, but it wasn't even the most worrying prospect of the military industrial complex. The founders had deliberately set up our government to make the decision to go to war a difficult one, forcing public debate about whether or not the war effort was worth making. When the United States didn't have a permanent armaments industry, every single time he had to go to war, the American people had to be convinced that the war was worth fighting. But by the 1960s, that military establishment existed. The president didn't actually have to make the case, it was already there. Tonight, the battle has been joined. Leave Kuwait or be driven. Today our armed forces joined our NATO allies in air strikes against By the early 90s, the Cold War had finally ended and the US no longer needed its vast military to fight off the Soviet threat. So with the war over, you would think that America's military would come to look more like one at peacetime, but that's not what happened. When the Cold War ended, why did the US military remain as active as it did? Why was it in so many places? 800 American military bases in more than 70 countries. Post-Cold War activities showed Americans that the military industrial complex that Eisenhower had warned about was here to stay, whether or not we had a major enemy to warrant it. I think it was reasonable for Americans to think that military spending would go down quite dramatically. And again, in some respects it did, but not nearly as what you might expect. The military establishment had in fact become permanent. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes in Afghanistan. War has come to Iraq for the third time in the culture of a century. We're going to war with Iraq, why? I guess if the only two you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail. After the 9-11 attacks thrust America into the war on terror, spending soared. And as objectives shifted from limited missions to nation building, spending reached a high not seen since World War II. And Americans were fed promise after promise that this would not be the new normal. We are leaving in 2014, period. By the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over. The President will soon announce a major shift. Our troops will be coming home from Afghanistan, then originally planned. Great nations do not fight endless wars, but why are we chosen? We spent a fortune on building this incredible base. We might as well keep it. The sway of the military-industrial complex on American foreign policy may leave the prospect of peace feeling elusive, but there is hope. I'm hopeful for the future of American foreign policy because I do see an entire generation of Americans who have grown up and reached adulthood during the time of the post-9-11 wars, who are committed to principles of tolerance and trade and cultural exchange, but deeply skeptical of the military as a preferred instrument of American foreign policy. This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made. If there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace.