Does that include maintaining air superiority? How likely is that in a serious shooting war? When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
Against a great power, it is unlikely to be possible without the kind of military buildup that would endanger our political system. But since we won't be starting any wars with the other great powers (right?), we don't really need to be able to win such a war. We just have to be able to make it too expensive for them to bother.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
We just have to be able to make it too expensive for them to bother.
And I am not sure that completely abolishing nukes is necessary, even if it might be desirable. Cutting down the aggregate global stockpile to less than 50 megaton should be sufficient. Fifty megaton would hurt badly if they were used, but if you assume that one megaton creates roughly one megadeath (1 million dead) it would not be worse than a major shooting war between two great powers using 21st cent. conventional weapons (by way of comparison, the Soviet theatre of WWII is estimated at between 20 and 100 megadeath depending on how you count and who you ask, IIRC).
If any of the great powers is determined to make us bleed, there is nothing we can do to avoid bleeding. We can make them bleed in return, but in a 21 cent. war between even moderately industrialised countries with population above a quarter billion, everybody loses. Except the war profiteers.
So if we spend a lot of money building up our military to defeat an irrational invasion, we have wasted our money, because Europe is going to be a smoking ruin after the war anyway. The best we can do is build up enough to deter a rational invasion.
And be sure to remind everyone how successful the biggest, nastiest military machine the planet has ever seen has been so far in subduing the third- and fourth-world countries that it invaded. The record from Viet Nam to Vietraq kinda speaks for itself...
