The Third Amendment and the Military-Industrial Complex

The Third Amendment is uncontroversial in every way. You are not likely to meet anybody who seeks to debate the Third Amendment. Below is a hilarious video from Reason.tv which features an uptight right-wing conservative and a hipster left-wing progressive. As they go through the Bill of Rights, the only amendment which they both agree to keep is our friendly Third Amendment.

The Third Amendment states that: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” The Founders had had to endure being forced to quarter British soldiers in their homes. For example, the British used quartering of soldiers in private homes as a method to punish the people of Boston under the Intolerable Acts of 1774. When the idea of a Bill of Rights was agreed upon, there was little or not controversy concerning including the Third Amendment.

So why should we give Third Amendment a second thought? What of importance can it tell us? The notion behind the Third Amendment is that the army should not grow to such size that without military bases the soldiers would be so numerous as to necessitate them being housed by the people.  While paying to house soldiers is less intrusive than physically quartering them in one’s house, being forced to pay for such housing is not really much different. 

Many of the key Founders loathed the idea of large standing armies. James Madison warned that: “A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen.” Madison also said: “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.” Thomas Jefferson was even more firm in his opposition to large armies during times of peace:

There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army.

The Founders realized that there would be threats to the security of the Republic.  However, by defending the natural right to bear arms in the Second Amendment, they believed that the expertise necessary to raise a militia if needed would be preserved within the populace. The modest non-interventionist policy of the Founders also meant that there was less of a reason for the United States to have a large standing army. The non-interventionism which characterized American foreign policy for much of its first century of existence was stated clearly in the advice given by President George Washington in his Farewell Address in 1796:  

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

A quarter of a century later, President John Quincy Adams reiterated America’s non-interventionist foreign policy in an Independence Day Address to the House of Representatives in 1821:

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.  But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.  She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.  She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.  She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.  She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.  The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....  She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....

The Constitution does provide for an army and navy and assigns the President to be the Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy. However, there is strong evidence that the Constitution does not contemplate the existence of a large standing army. Article I grants to Congress the enumerated power “To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.” This indicates that the Founders did not believe that a perpetually large military or a Republic constantly on a war footing were inherent. Military appropriations were to be re-evaluated every two years. 

Despite the warnings of many of the Founders about standing armies, and despite the safeguards that were built into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to prevent them from arising, the United States has a massive standing army – not only stationed at home but all over the globe. Following World War II, President Truman began the largely unnecessary Cold War. Despite the Cold War ending in 1991, the United States now has approximately 1.5 million active military personnel and another 1.5 million military reserves. The growing “American Empire” has over 700 military bases overseas located in over 130 countries.

On January 17, 1961, in his Farewell Address to the American people, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about what he dubbed “the Military-Industrial Complex”:

            Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.  But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.  Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.  We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.  The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government.  We recognize the imperative need for this development.  Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.  Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

            In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.  The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

            We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.  We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The growth of the defense industry has made it one of the major components of the American economy. The United States currently accounts for over 40% of all military spending in the world. Of the other nations in the top twenty of military spending, all are staunch allies of the United States except for China, Russia, and Iran. The United States currently has a military budget that is five times that of China, over ten times that of Russia, and over sixty-four times that of Iran. The main problem in reducing military spending will be the drastic effect that it will have on the economy. The government employs over 3.1 million military and civilian workers in the defense sector while another 3 million Americans work for defense contractors.

With so much of the economy dependent on war, the United States is inevitably on a permanent war footing. With so much weaponry at its disposal, the federal government will inevitably become adventurous when it comes to military action. Hence, the United States has engaged in warfare in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Libya since the end of World War II. The advent of the “Imperial Presidency” and the unwillingness of Congress to take its power to declare war seriously have made American Presidents even more willing to keep and use large standing armies – at the expense of much American blood and treasure.

Therefore, the Third Amendment is not an archaic and irrelevant prohibition. It stands as a prescient warning of the dangers of turning a Republic into an Empire.