Y******9
发帖数: 1 | 1 The business of Homeland Security thrives in the two decades since 9/11
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, led policy makers to embark on one of the
largest spending binges in federal government history, transforming the
private sector, the Washington metropolitan area and Americans’
relationship with their government.
Two cabinet departments—the Defense Department and Department of Homeland
Security, which was created after the attacks to consolidate a number of
existing agencies—saw huge funding increases as Washington geared up to
fight two conventional wars, conduct world-wide operations against small,
distributed networks of terrorists and harden the home front against future
attacks.
The world’s sole superpower in 2001, the U.S. had been cutting military
spending for nearly a decade before the terrorist attacks. Military spending
as a share of gross domestic product had shrunk to less than a third of its
size at the height of the Vietnam War and less than half what it had been
in the Reagan years.
Policy makers cast that reduction as a "peace dividend," expressing hope
that the Cold War’s end would usher in an era of prosperity in which
military outlays could be redirected into social services and tax cuts. |
|
