I think most people distinguish between "baseline defense spending" and "elective war" in a general sense without either term feeling overtly political.
But if we were to take the set of [Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq] and try to decide in particular which are which, we would quickly find that to be political.
So in America, the political-ness of "war" tends to shift with the times. Right now, those times are 'interesting'.
