Hi KLP; Re the ability of North Korea to destroy the United States.
In any kind of a serious conflict, I'd put my money on the U.S., even with only 1/20th the military that the U.S. currently has.
In fact, I'd put my money on Brazil to beat North Korea.
It is not within the United States' capability to make the world perfectly safe for the United States. It is in no country's power to make the world safe for that country, nor has it ever been. Every country that focused too much effort and expenditure on reaching that mirage has bled itself dry.
If North Korea (or Iraq, for that matter) wants to damage the United States they can easily bring nuclear, biological or chemical weapons into the United States through either its own porous coastlines, or through that of neighboring countries. A lot of those things don't even need to be imported, the raw materials for blowing buildings up are already present throughout the United States.
This is nothing new, it is the way it has always been.
The way to get along with humans is to get along with them, not to try and make sure that you're the only one with weapons. The best way to get along with humans is to treat them fairly, and be prepared to attack when necessary.
In the realm of defense, the United States has done incredibly well, and our position is unbelievably safe and powerful. It is easy to predict that the percentage of the GDP that we spend on defense is going to drop over the next 20 years to a fraction (i.e. less than 1/2) of what it currently is. That will happen regardless of who gets elected. The primary force keeping military expenditures relatively high (very very high for peacetime) is the military industrial complex.
Bush is now making noises to the effect that the U.S. military's objective (in terms of the number of simultaneous wars that the U.S. could bring overwhelming force to). I'm in favor of this, it is something that only a Republican president could do. (And I have to admit that cutting welfare was something that only a Democratic president could pull off.)
-- Carl |
