“Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed.
 This world in arms is not spending money alone.
 It is spending the sweat of its laborers,
the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

—Dwight Eisenhower
Five-Star General, US President

If we want to rethink the role of military operations in the future of the Republic, we can analyze the various options and their costs in the cold, hard logic of return on investment. We face two questions: 1) how much peace of mind can we buy for any given level of military investment; and 2) how much will we consider enough?

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