lowing wrote:
ruisleipa wrote:
lowing wrote:
From where I sit, if missiles are going to be pointed, which is inevitable, it is better to do the pointing and having control over it, than it is to be pointed at. You and I benefit form such military superiority. So please do not piss in the bed you sleep well in.
point is the amount you guys spend on arms and 'defence' is, it seems to me, way out of all proportion compared with any imagined threats, and is money you could spend much more wisely, not to mention humanely. It's that simple really, never mind all that bumpf about world's policeman blah blah.
question, do you think if the US let its guard down for ourselves and our allies, that weakness would be exploited?
I think an argument could be made that due to such military superiority, the US and its allies live with greater freedom and greater quality of life, unoppressed.
I don't think there's any question that a decrease in our military might would be exploited in the short run. I think the tenuous part of this issue is whether or not the rest of the world would adjust their own military spending to pick up the slack. Given historical precedents, I'd say they would.
I could be wrong, but it seems like people's attitudes toward interventionism depend on the level of power a country has. We tend to favor it, because we have so much power. Whereas, a country like Finland has a small military and a small population, so they have little reason to support getting involved more.
If we became less involved, our largest allies would start beefing up their militaries. For example, Germany has a relatively isolationist attitude toward war partly because of their Nazi past and partly because we literally didn't allow West Germany to build up much of a military during the Cold War. So, essentially, several generations of Germans were brought up in an environment where they were faced with learning about a shameful Nazi past while having a foreign power station troops on their land. Generally speaking, that tends to make a society less supportive of war.
However, as time goes by, their shame regarding the Nazi movement subsides, and their society is able to move on. We've allowed them to rebuild their military now, and there may come a time where we might remove our troops. Even with our presence still in Germany, if we started to cut our involvement in the outside world militarily, I think it's reasonable to assume that Germany would adapt by increasing their own power.
As a country becomes more militarily powerful, interventionism starts to look more attractive.
Also, you have to remember that Europe's current reluctance to get involved is a relatively recent development. Europe's major powers were very interventionist before the first world war. Obviously, the devastation of the first world war radically changed much of Europe's attitude toward war, and the second world war only reinforced this mindset.
However, as these wars and the Cold War dissipate from our collective memory, Europe will likely become less reluctant to get involved -- especially if we start cutting our own involvement. This would allow for a more balanced presence of military might throughout the developed world, and it would relieve America of much of its interventionist burden.
