Tim
1 - You didn't answer my question. The obvious reason for this is that there is no deployed active anti balistic missile system in the US.
Your question was no longer significant to the discussion....it was determined that any defense system will be ineffective. That does not change the fact that we have missiles beyond the Patriot that can take out incoming missile. But again that's not important either.
2 - One nation fell under the onslaught of huge defense budgets and we may be the second if this reactionary call for armaments is met.
The Soviet Union probably spent over 20% of its GNP on defence (at a minimum it was in the teens). The US not many years ago spent 7% now we spend around 4% maybe less (I wasn't able to find up to date figures on this).
Who cares about GNP.....much of the $$$ made in the GNP doesn't go into the gov't's coffers. That's why I prefer the budget numbers which are somewhat realistic. And there we so defense took up 16% of over 1 trillion dollars budgeted. And that's okay?
Even with a strategic missle defense plan, and some more funds for readiness, this percentage will not increase over the next several years. It might increase a tenth or two in any particular year, but over the next 5 or 10 all it would have to do is keep pace with economic growth. Actually it probably would not do even that, it would grow in inflation adjusted dollars but shrink as a % of the budget or as a % of GNP. So ten years out you are talking about 3% of the GNP for defense and this is supposed to be such a burden that it causes our country to fall? Its a lower percentage that at any time since before WWII.
I see no point in following this line of thinking for the reasons I said above.
"Reagan launched a military buildup premised on the belief that the Soviet Union was too economically vulnerable to compete in an accelerated arms race and would come to the bargaining table if pressured by the West. He preached a message of freedom that he believed would energize the people of Eastern Europe and penetrate within the Soviet Union itself. Many members of the political establishment, including some leading Republicans, thought these views were at best naive. They were also alarmed by Reagan's provocative comments about communism, particularly his resonant description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire." But times changed. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989; by the end of 1991 most nations behind the former Iron Curtain were masters of their destiny, and the Soviet Union, as Reagan had foreseen, was left on the scrapheap of history."
Yes all of this is true. Of course most of the credit has to go to the people in the countries who resisted the oppresive regime. A lot also has to go to Gorbachov. Not for doing what he wanted to do, but for making mistakes. He thought he could reform the sytem but instead he unleashed forces beyond his control. He might have been able to control them with massive forceful repression. Fortunatly he (unlike the communist leaders in China) did not decide to go down that road.
The above paragraph from the book is said in a tone of sarcasm. Reagan's expenditures for defense did little to bring down Russia because it was already crumbling on its own. All the military rhetoric re Russia from the early 80's, that was coined as insider info was, in fact, bull. However, Reagan decided to take this info on face value, and build a huge arsenal of weapons.....doing his share in increasing our deficit so that now we pay 11% of over 1 trillion dollars towards interest.
Had Reagan done just a little research he would have found out that Russia's economy was not on the level of a Japan but rather Mexico; that Russia was having trouble just in the maintenance of its arsenal, let alone making it larger. In the meantime we wasted 60 billion on Starwars...unbelievable.
Such waste..... such bullshit.....we put ancient Rome in its worst days to shame.
ted |
