Article 1, Section 8, Clause 12: Raising and Support of Armies

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

Congress is granted power to raise armies, so that the federal government is not reliant entirely on state militias in time of war. However, the Framers considered large standing armies to be a threat to republican government, and were concerned that such armies remain firmly under civilian control. This accounts for the requirement that appropriations for the army must be renewed every two years.

The United States maintained a very small army throughout its early history, except in time of war.  This did not really change until after the Second World War. Even then, the postwar demobilization was extensive, and there seemed to be some notion that a powerful nuclear deterrent could eliminate the need for a large army. The wartime army of 8,266,373 at the end of June, 1945, was down to 1,435,496 a year later. It was down to 554,030 by 1948, then began to climb again during the Cold War, hovering at about 770,000 to 1,600,000 during most of that period of history. After 1990, the numbers steadily climbed, to just over half a million, where they have largely remained.

The total military strength of the United States places us (depending on whether reserves and paramilitary are included) somwhere between the third largest and the seventh largest in the world. A disproportionate fraction of this is Navy and Air Force. However, it remains the case that we have had a large standing army, by any reasonable understanding of that term, since the Second World War. The trauma of that conflict, in which the Army rose from 189,839 in 1939 to 8,266,373 in 1945, has created a fairly broad consensus among policymakers that the traditional small army of earlier times is no longer viable.

The Constitutional intent that the Army remain firmly under civilian control seems to have held up well. We can point to no incident in our lifetimes in which the Army ever seriously threatened a coup. The possibility of a coup sometime in the future cannot be ruled out, of course. But protections against such a coup include the continuing reliance of the Army on Congressional support for funding; the prohibition on any Army officer serving as Secretary of Defense unless long retired; the tendency for many Army officers  and enlisted men to regard their time in the Army as a launching pad to a civilian career; and the continued existence of a Second Amendment that ensures there is a large body of armed civilians. Perhaps most important is a long tradition of civilian control of the Army, which of course did not exist in 1787.

The greatest threat to the Constitution from the Army comes, in our view, from the Army’s growing perception of itself as an elite. Army personnel are tempted to believe that they are physically, morally, and spiritually superior to civilians who have never served. This is particularly a temptation when the Army is engaged in active conflicts for long periods of time in the absence of a draft. We are not fond of the draft, but believe it nonetheless has the merit of keeping the Army under close civilian observation.