It is assured of ample income and
entrusted with the installations and implements of war making. Both in
income and in prestige the military holds a preferred position.
Since military functions center about destroying the person and
property of the "enemy"--domestic or foreign--public funds are made
available or are pre-empted by the military during periods of martial
law. As a civilization becomes more complex and extensive, the funds at
the disposal of the military tend to increase. The same factors of
extent and complexity lead to larger and larger numbers of
confrontations and conflicts in which the military is called upon to
play the leading role. Increasingly, therefore, the military is at the
center of policy making. Finally a point is reached at which war, civil,
colonial or international is always in progress somewhere within the
territories occupied by the civilization. At such periods civil law
slumbers and military authority is more or less dominant and permanent.
Under the slogan "defense of civilization," military necessity and
military adventurism shape public policy, empty the public treasury,
bankrupt and eventually destroy the superstructure of a civilization.
The nucleus which lies at the heart of an empire or a civilization has a
political life cycle that runs from the unstructured or little
structured aggregation of confederation or self-determining local groups
to a highly centralized political absolutism holding and exercising its
authority by the use of the military.
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