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

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.