[guyromm]

The author implies that a citizen army would lessen the leadership's appetite for offensive overseas campaigns.

Interestingly enough, the bulk of Israel's army to this day is composed of drafted 18 year olds, and despite that, the only time there was a major public outcry about the necessity of a military campaign was during the first Lebanon war (1982). that war was perceived by the public as a reckless regime-changing adventure by a particular general (Ariel Sharon).

I assume that the IDF's decades long policing mission (=occupation) of the West Bank along with the periodical campaigns in Gaza & Lebanon do not generate an outcry of similar size, presumably due to the much stronger indoctrination level of the Israeli public, as opposed to that of the American. There is a general consensus around the absence of a less violent path to coexistence in the Middle East.

to this day, I've been a supporter of reforming the IDF into a smaller professional army with the express purpose of making it more difficult for the state to apply foreign policy using force, with the added benefit of keeping unwilling citizens outside of the cycle of violence.

The article, however, implies that the US has achieved the ability to increasingly "project power" by detaching its military apparatus from the society as a whole..