FEOS wrote:
delta4bravo*nl* wrote:
I loved the cold war, all was nice and stable, people had tons of work making weapons and other related items.
face it the us needs a war, cold war would do them well.
The US neither needs nor wants a war.
With close to 11% of our GDP dependant on arms sales, government hand-outs (Military Keynesianism), or military contracts, foreign and domestic. We are currently highly dependant on war of any kind or our economy will tank worse than it already is.
As far as Russia objecting to a missile defense system, it seems strange if you look at it through a pin-hole, but in the big picture of strategic weapons their concerns are very valid.
They've worked very hard to reduce the nukes they've stocked during the Cold War, as they are expensive to maintain and utterly overkill. We've actually let our strategic arsenal go about the same. The two "superpowers" of old (USA and USSR) were held in check by a concept called "MAD" (mutually assured destruction). Which means if anyone pushes the button, everyone dies. A "missile shield", unless deployed equally by both sides, destroys this conept.
Post-USSR Russia, has figured out that nuclear arms are nothing but a big money sink, and would rather invest their tax dollars on other strategic assets, like state-monopolies on oil. A missile shield for the USA though means the following:
Big cash windfall (like they need it) to the corporations developing and deploying it. Taxpayers get stuck with the bill.
Forces Russia to up the ante, either by deploying more nukes or developing their own shield...wasting their tax dollars.
Either way, America needs to balance with even more nukes. Another big cash windfall at taxpayer expense.
Putin is slick and possibly evil, but he's not stupid. Bush's cronies are self-serving and greedy, but not stupid. Basically, a lot of idealogues advising Bush want things back the way they were, beating Russia by seeing who can max out their countries' credit cards the fastest. USA barely won the last round and we're in no position to do it again without some kind of slave labor.
Basic idea - Missile shield bad for USA, bad for the world, mmmkay?