It’s also when we shifted to permanently having a large standing army. The generous reading of those events is that by the end of WWII it was clear that a “grea

It’s also when we shifted to permanently having a large standing army. The generous reading of those events is that by the end of WWII it was clear that a “great power” wouldn’t have time to re-arm for the next big war, because the pace of war had increased so much and maneuver combined-arms warfare was both very effective and required far more training than older approaches, and “defense” reflects this shift to maintaining a large military apparatus even in peacetime. Less-generous readings of the events are obvious and common :-)