3
those who provide these goods and services certainly have a special stake in it, military
spending is primarily an input into a larger set of national security policies that also
produce economic winners and losers. Because these economic interests are less widely
recognized that those that come directly from the income effects of military spending,
they require some explanation.
American national security policy has long encompassed more than the immediate
defense of the United States. Since at least the end of the World War II, American policy
makers have sought to establish and maintain a world order that would be open for
American trade and investment. Although the United States was not as unambiguously
supportive of free trade as Britain was during its period of 19
th
century predominance,
American policy makers nevertheless worked to develop international institutions that
promoted increased international trade and more liberal foreign investment. The
architects of postwar American foreign policy believed that a relatively liberal world
order would insure the security of the nation as well its prosperity.
American military spending played an important part of the construction and
maintenance of the postwar world order. Substantial American military spending was
necessary to uphold U.S. commitments to the security of key developed trading partners
and investment sites in Western Europe and East Asia. It provided the military power
needed to contain or eliminate challengers to the world order, including not only the
Soviet Union and China, but also less powerful states, such as Cuba, that sought to offer
alternative models of economic and political development. Since the end of the Cold
War, and even more since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the role of military
power in American efforts to shape and enforce the rules of behavior in the international
Convention