The Real Purpose of the American Military
By 
You might think the real purpose of the American military is national defense.
You would be incorrect in that assumption.
The real purpose of the American military is job creation through both direct employment of soldiers and spurring the economy through defense production plants.
The Navy estimated that the move would save $4.3 billion over the next five years, money that Admiral Gilday said he would rather spend on missiles and other firepower needed to prepare for potential wars. Having ships capable of fulfilling the military mission, he argued, was much more important than the Navy’s total ship count.
Then the lobbying started.
A consortium of players with economic ties to the ships — led by a trade association whose members had just secured contracts worth up to $3 billion to do repairs and supply work on them — mobilized to pressure Congress to block the plan, with phone calls, emails and visits to Washington to press lawmakers to intervene.
“Early decommissioning of littoral combat ships at Mayport Naval Station would result in the loss of more than 2,000 direct jobs in Jacksonville,” a coalition of business leaders from the Florida city wrote last summer.
The effort targeted members of Congress who represent communities with large Navy stations and have collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the same military contractors that help maintain and operate these ships. They included Representative Rob Wittman, Republican of Virginia, who represents the Hampton Roads area, home to the world’s largest naval facility.
Within weeks, lawmakers offered amendments to the 2023 Pentagon spending authorization law that prohibited the Navy from retiring four of the eight ships in Jacksonville and the one in San Diego.
“These ships are not perfect — no new class of ship is,” said Representative John Rutherford, Republican of Florida, who represents the Jacksonville area and introduced one of the amendments after a meeting with a delegation of Florida officials who had flown to Washington to protest the Navy’s decision. “But they are fulfilling operational needs as we speak.”
When I talk about the idea of a government guaranteed job and the programs required to make that happen, people sometimes think is utopian. But that’s not true. We already have this. It’s just in the incredibly inefficient and in many ways awful program of the military. Imagine what a sharp reduction in the number of people in the military would mean for the American employment market. It would undermine a huge job program that especially makes a difference for young workers who are not going to college and have few other skills to offer. Say what you will about the military, but this is at least as important as any national security concerns for why it will never be significantly reduced.