The U.S. military-civilian split (3)

Robert D. Kaplan, in An Empire Wilderness (1998), devoted a substantial portion of the book to describing the American military culture, or more precisely that of the officer corps. He perceived a military that was becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of the country, in a variety of ways: by its professional expertise; by the high level as well as the areas of its intellectual interests, for example, in ancient history; by being located on physically remote military bases; by its class background (rural blue-collar); and by its present low economic level. Military personnel live Spartan existences by comparison with other Americans, though this seems to be a source of pride rather than bitterness. Another distinction is that the military is racially more integrated than the rest of American society.