Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace.

• Author: Arkin, William M.

Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace by William Greider Public Affairs. 202 pages. $22.00.

If Operation Allied Force teaches us anything, it is that there are two militaries: one is "in the field," and the other is in Washington. The former is agile, professional, lethal. But it is no match for headquarters.

The gulf between these communities seems greater than ever. The politically captivated, money-hungry lap dogs in Washington slip deeper into a post-Cold War geek-wonk bubble that is utterly impenetrable. The competence and abundance of available military forces oddly seems to embolden them to pull the trigger with greater and greater regularity. Washington brass position the pieces, and the professionals in the field are left to do their best given the now all-too-common hesitations, political limits, and short attention spans.

Like clockwork, Washington moves on to the next crisis, and the military is left holding the bag. From Korea to Iraq to Haiti to Bosnia and soon in the former Yugoslavia, the field officers get the task of imposing the embargoes, administering the no-fly zones, and supervising the peacekeeping forces that are left scattered behind.

What a way to run the world! It is like maintaining an ever ballooning credit card balance.

If the U.S. military weren't so good, Washington might actually be forced to resort to international security by other means. Given all the talk of post-Cold War sensibilities, such as humanitarian concerns, a limitation on military means might actually force Washington thinkers to set priorities, to rely more on the United Nations, to leave conflicts to regional actors to resolve, and--dare I even say it--sit idly by sometimes. Just because the military is always ready to go doesn't mean that it should be on a perpetual oneway flight over there.

William Greider is a lucid journalist who explained the inner workings of the Federal Reserve in Secrets of the Temple (Simon & Schuster, 1987) and predicted the current global economic crisis in One World, Ready or Not (Simon & Schuster, 1997). Now in Fortress America he has written an elegant essay on matters military. Greider seeks to unravel what happened when the Cold War ended and "peace was resumed." He says his book is a "sympathetic wake-up call."

The military, as Greider nicely puts it, is a "shark that never sleeps, that must keep moving through the water, feeding continuously to sustain itself." The Pentagon...