You misunderstand my comment. I'm not talking about a world in which war doesn't exist, but one in which a given country doesn't have constant military engagement. There's no need to think about whether this is possible, because there are plenty of countries for whom this is already true. Obviously many of these countries (Europe et al) are able to do this in large part _because_ of the US military, so I'm not suggesting that it's as simple as "we should stop having military engagements entirely". It's naive to think that we don't also reap benefits from being in a position of what's essentially military hegemony. But this doesn't really debunk the theory one might have about industry's role in ensuring that the US stays in this position.
EDIT to add: The binary way you're looking at it is also way off from reality; It seems self-evident that the more often one has military engagements, the easier it is to convince those in charge that more money should flow to military expenditures (which includes peacetime research). It's not the simple case of "constant war = military spending" vs "utopia = no military spending" that you're describing.
EDIT to add: The binary way you're looking at it is also way off from reality; It seems self-evident that the more often one has military engagements, the easier it is to convince those in charge that more money should flow to military expenditures (which includes peacetime research). It's not the simple case of "constant war = military spending" vs "utopia = no military spending" that you're describing.