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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: Road Walker who wrote (259450)11/11/2005 9:17:07 AM
From: combjelly  Read Replies (1) of 1577931
 
"Disregarding moral authority, the Iraq adventure is a bad business decision."

I agree. It has upset the balance of power in an area which has never been very stable. Kurdistan is in de facto existence and that has ramifications for Turkey, Iran and others in the region. Iran is pushing to be a nuclear power with much more zeal than before. They have an opportunity that hasn't existed for them in a very long while. Saudi Arabia probably isn't long for this world, all the proto-bin Ladins in SA can get great training in Iraq and will be trying to destabilize that regime, which is getting more and more vulnerable. And so on.

As far as the costs of empire, that apparently isn't particularly high. Except for those periods when an empire battles another, the ongoing costs of imperialism is pretty low. Averaged over the time from 1820 to 1956, Britain's military costs ran about 6.9% of their GNP. And that included the Boer War and WWI and WWII, the latter two their costs went up to almost 100% of their GNP. That also included the period when Britain transitioned from sail with its ships of the line, through the dreadnoughts and the battleships when Britain was replacing their biggest warships every few years.
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