Going back to the situation of the French overseas departments, a war to defend them would mean that our relations with (presumably) Mercosur had already been shot to Hell, stabbed with a grill poker and roasted lightly over a fire somewhere on the Fifth Level. That would be a disaster in and of itself quite outclassing any negative impact of losing Cayenne. Winning the actual shooting war would, at the very best, be a Pyrrhic victory.
Similarly, we could certainly arm ourselves to the teeth in order to be able to win a potential future war with Russia. But even if we "win" a serious shooting war with Russia we'll lose so much in terms of human lives, resources, prestige and industrial capacity that we'll have lost anyway.
So our focus should not be on making sure that we can beat the snot out of anybody who might try to invade us. Our focus should be on making sure that they are perfectly confident that they won't make a profit from invading us. And frankly, I can see no possible scenario under which it would be profitable for any country to spark a serious shooting war with the European Union in order to acquire Cayenne...
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
On the other hand, I am a German. :) And France was a really important trade partner to Germany both before WW1 and WW2. IIRC the most important before WW2. So trade and profit in itself doesn´t seem to be enough to avoid war. Especially if one side can point to alleged grievances not solved by the last peace treaty.
And concerning South America. You´re trying to tell me that all of the countries there are now stable democracies? No chance that any of the countries there will revert back to military dictatorships?
Simply put, I don´t want a shooting war with either Russia or some South American country. I think we should just pay the insurance policy (defense budget) to ensure that both of them aren´t tempted to try their luck.
We don´t have to be strong enough to conquer them. We simply have to be strong enough to defeat them if they attack us.
... where it seems that the primary role of either of these vessels is not in defending against an attack but in instigating an attack. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
