What if we simply abolished our entire active duty military?

Well, not entirely of course. In a nutshell,

we abolish the active duty standing Army and Air Force, fold the JSOC (SEALs and Marines) back into the Navy proper, and combine the Coast Guard and the National Guard into a new entity, Homeland Defense. We also would require by law that only civilian intelligence agencies be permitted, closing down all the military intelligence agencies. Finally, we establish another new entity, the Remote Operations, into which the nuclear arsenal and all unmanned resources (predator drones, etc) can be combined.

I have a detailed argument over at Dean2016. Take a look!

Of course, one advantage of abolishing the active military would be less incentive (and capability) to engage in military adventurism of the sort we have in Iraq (and arguably, Libya, though I still do support the latter). Since most of this adventurism is usually directed at the muslim world in the past few decades, the net effect would arguably be more security, not less – as the prime irritant of Western interference in muslim majority nation affairs is drastically reduced.