What's an economy of war without a war?

It seems to me that historically the Western economy always has been one geared for war. Efficient and ruthless, because any other would have been crushed after an actual combat. The major downside of this kind of economy is that it exhausts both its environment and its own people out of fear of being killed or annexed. This lesser of two evils can be justified when there is an actual existential military threat, but it becomes the main problem when there aren’t anymore.

American political commentators have recently asked since when the American society became so politically divided. The truth is that it’s always been divided as a nation of settlers of an inhabited land and later the major beneficiary of the slave trade. But it’s also always been under military threat since its inception, so there always was a threatening foreign enemy for Americans to rally together against. However, this stopped after the Soviet nuclear threat vanished in 1989. The United States won a race nobody was running anymore, and started recounting its own internal injuries it ignored to get there.

It isn’t for a lack of trying to cover them up though, as made-up wars have freely burgeoned in political speeches. The War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the Second Iraq War, all failed to provide a tangible external threat that could focus the public attention away from social justice, instead producing even more internal resentment as the war beast turned on itself for a lack of prey.

The September 11th, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in New York City rekindled the national fervor against a common enemy, but it was short-lived. It quickly became apparent that this attack was meant to be a single event and that the United States weren’t structurally threatened. But at this point the US already did far greater damage to its own people (mainly freedom and privacy-wise) than any foreign power could have done themselves.

We don’t need this kind of soulless efficiency now, even less by spending people’s well-being and dwindling natural resources.