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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (15941)	9/10/2001 11:21:08 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

Hi twfowler; Re: "Or if you have the North Korean army try to fight through the Amazon I would also agree. But if you place Brazil's army and air force in South Korea and make them have to fight off an invasion from the North without any help from the US or the armed forces of South Korea or any other country and I think the Brasil would lose." Well, if your aunt had balls she'd be your uncle. If Brazil and North Korea were next to each other, Brazil would be better prepared. Re: "The primary reason while they have been relatively low (relative to the 80s in terms of real dollars, or even more so relative to most of the cold war as a % of GDP) is because all the spending in the 80s gave us lots of new equipment, which is just now starting to get old." Of course military expenditures are lower now than they were in the heart of the cold war. That's why we called it the cold "war" and not the cold "peace". The proper comparison for our current military expenditures is not with the cold war, certainly not with any hot war, but with typical peace time expenditures. The problem is that the world has either been in war, or about to be in war between 1914 and 1989. Since then, our military expenditures have dropped, but nearly as much as the military threats have. In 1985 our armor was facing Russian armor across the plains of northern Germany. It's not realistic to compare the current situation to the time when the two superpowers faced off across the Fulda gap. We won. This is peacetime. *We fought the 75-year long war to "make the world safe for Democracy", and now the world is safe for democracy.* We should have had a party when the Berlin wall fell. We have not yet got used to it being peacetime. When we have, I expect the Republican party to return to its traditional isolationism. Frankly, I look forward to that. During peacetime, military expenditures should be concentrated on R&D, making sure that productive capability is available, (as opposed to actually producing weapons that quickly become obsolete), and reserves instead of standing army. A better comparison than 1980 would be 1880. I know, it's been a long time, but the world has had peace before. -- Carl