©Josh
Sager – October 2012
The United States is currently on a policy
trajectory that is leading us towards becoming what I refer to as a “hollow
fortress”. The term “hollow fortress” is one that I have coined to refer to a
society which focuses so many resources on becoming impervious to an external
threat that it causes its own decay from the inside out. By neglecting domestic
needs in order to defend against external threats, a society can easily destroy
itself and make the threats from external sources redundant—there is little
point in defending against external threats when what you are supposed to be
protecting has already disappeared.
Paranoia of an external enemy—whether it is fear of
another country or terrorism—has been shown to be able to induce a massive
military investment. We have seen such paranoia during the Cold War, in both
the USSR and the USA, as well as in the USA during the “war on terror” in the
post-9/11 United States. Citizens let their fear guide them and elect
politicians who are willing to spend gigantic amounts of money on defense
programs, regardless of whether these programs are actually useful. The massive
increases in military spending in such a situation eat into funding for
domestic programs and can be extremely harmful to the welfare of society as a
whole. If an unrealistically over-funded military takes up all of a society’s
resources, it results in the gradual, but inevitable, decay of the military’s
society—the defense against the inflated threat takes up so many resources that
it destroys the functionality of the society which it hopes to protect.
Every country must protect itself from external
threats, but it is also vital to the health of a society for the government to
focus upon domestic welfare. Every successful modern government understands
that it must enact domestic programs in order to ensure that it has a
functional national infrastructure and that its population receives a minimum
level of care. Programs to sustain functional roads, reduce poverty and hunger,
educate the population, and protect the rule of law (to give a few examples)
are all vital to a functioning society; when a society disregards these
programs, there is an inevitable decay of its economic situation, a decrease in
the living standards of its population, and often, civil unrest.
If a government stops investing in domestic
programs, it quickly starts to enter a stagnated state and eventually begins to
stop functioning (like a machine that is running without repairs or oil).
- When the national infrastructure (ex. roads, bridges, ports, etc.) begins to wear out due to economic neglect, it becomes harder and more expensive to travel or transport goods—this increased difficulty of transport increases the prices of goods and is detrimental to both the economy and the welfare of the population.
- Neglecting education programs leads to an unskilled population, which is a serious problem because it decreases the ability of people to get higher-paying jobs and makes it difficult for companies to find skilled workers for specialized position.
- Neglecting programs which are aimed at fighting poverty and hunger leads to suffering among the poorer members of society and to increased crime. People become caught in a vicious cycle of poverty and neglect, which leads them to turn to criminal enterprises, simply in an attempt to survive.
Once a society has neglected its domestic policy to the
point where it begins to stop functioning, both its citizens and its commerce
suffers. Due to the high cost of modern defense technologies (ex. missiles and
jets), an over-investment in defense is a very real way that a society can
become unable to fund its domestic programs. As there is no enemy to fight in
order to solve many domestic problems, no amount of military might is able to
combat this type of societal damage.
The greatest real-life example of a modern hollow
fortress society today is the country North Korea. The North Korean government
has focused huge amounts of its resources and national effort into sustaining a
powerful military but has given up virtually every program that benefits its
populace domestically.
North Korea suffers from numerous, severe, social
problems that are un-addressed due to its lack of domestic programs. Immense
hunger and malnutrition problems have afflicted the population of North Korea
and have led to thousands of deaths a year (exact statistics are difficult to
obtain). The general population of North Korea has no access to education or
any manner of social services. The national infrastructure (ex. roads/civil
safety) of North Korea has decayed to the point where industry is essentially
unsustainable. When taken as a whole, North Korea is a perfect example of a
country where the leadership has disregarded the good of its population and has
stopped virtually all domestic non-security programs.
In stark contrast with its lack of domestic programs,
the North Korean military is disproportionately powerful. While the repressive
North Korean regime makes it virtually impossible to determine the country’s
real military power, it is estimated that they spend billions of dollars a year
on defense investment; in addition to the standing military and the investment
in military technology, North Korea has a nuclear program that has produced
several weapons. For a country where millions are starving, industry is
essentially dead, and poverty is the norm, the North Korean military
demonstrates a massive redirection of resources to defense programs and gives a
stark example of a hollow fortress society.
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