It is, unfortunately, the case that an urgent need to keep the away tribe in their place (filthy savages, can’t be trusted) is among the best ways of shaking the purse strings loose; but it is a painfully inefficient one. You end up signing off on a lot of either pure ‘guns’ projects or ‘butter’ projects heavily influenced by the needs of military clients, in order to sneak the plan you actually want in there.
As a matter of political realism, there may not be a better way (at least with the US electorate as it is); but it isn’t pretty to watch such an inefficient system of allocation at work.
On the plus side, the Cold War at least inspired a lot of ‘nationalism through building impressive stuff’ projects, which beat the hell out of The War on Terror’s ‘nationalism through paranoia’ focus…
