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Richelieu
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Gatineau
Dec 2001
time: 00:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Lonestar
He would have been eventually. |
Yes. Yes of course.
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shawnmmcc
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Carriers are inherently offensive in nature. They are for projecting power. Power means the ability to compel individual(s) to do what you want, in this case the argument is the threat or use of destruction and death.
Having a strong offensive capabilty during the Cold War still ended up with the US engaging in Imperial activity - look at all of our interventions in Central America. Having it at this point, to the degree we do, is primarily imperial. Being the world's policeman means using force to compel the behavior of those whose behavior you disapprove of.
Police use force to do this, thus the necessities of the Aircraft Carriers. Now one can argue over whether the use of force to compel the greater good is an excellent idea, or an oxymoron that is doomed to failure. The Euros tend toward the latter view, the US the former. However, you'll note in all that arguing, nobody prevented Rwanda or Darfour, and bluntly much of the world minimized the non-Serbian actions in the Balkans, which got us imported Muslim death squads in Bosnia, Croat atrocities, and Albanian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, to name a few examples.
However, just like the Brits during it's Empire days, the US is paying a heavy economic price for it's meddling. If you look at the cost of creating the ability to project power, and compare it to the other countries in the world starting to surpass us, it is going to have the same effect on the US. The Wall Street Journal just ran an article on published Scientific Papers, the US has been static for about half a decade, the Euros overtook us around the Millenium, and I cannot remember is Asia had or was just about to overtake us.
So we have more Carriers. The Soviets had the largest Surface Fleet in the world. After their economy fell apart, much of it rusted due to lack of maintenance. I doubt the US will have a catastrophic failure like that, it will be more like a whimper. For example, we cannot afford to re-equip our Air Units with the new Stealth Aircraft. The harbringer of the future.
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Geronimo
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st cloud USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:37
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quote:
Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Carriers are inherently offensive in nature. They are for projecting power. Power means the ability to compel individual(s) to do what you want, in this case the argument is the threat or use of destruction and death.
Having a strong offensive capabilty during the Cold War still ended up with the US engaging in Imperial activity - look at all of our interventions in Central America. Having it at this point, to the degree we do, is primarily imperial. Being the world's policeman means using force to compel the behavior of those whose behavior you disapprove of.
Police use force to do this, thus the necessities of the Aircraft Carriers. Now one can argue over whether the use of force to compel the greater good is an excellent idea, or an oxymoron that is doomed to failure. The Euros tend toward the latter view, the US the former. However, you'll note in all that arguing, nobody prevented Rwanda or Darfour, and bluntly much of the world minimized the non-Serbian actions in the Balkans, which got us imported Muslim death squads in Bosnia, Croat atrocities, and Albanian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, to name a few examples.
However, just like the Brits during it's Empire days, the US is paying a heavy economic price for it's meddling. If you look at the cost of creating the ability to project power, and compare it to the other countries in the world starting to surpass us, it is going to have the same effect on the US. The Wall Street Journal just ran an article on published Scientific Papers, the US has been static for about half a decade, the Euros overtook us around the Millenium, and I cannot remember is Asia had or was just about to overtake us.
So we have more Carriers. The Soviets had the largest Surface Fleet in the world. After their economy fell apart, much of it rusted due to lack of maintenance. I doubt the US will have a catastrophic failure like that, it will be more like a whimper. For example, we cannot afford to re-equip our Air Units with the new Stealth Aircraft. The harbringer of the future. |
So very true. Scientific grant money and military spending are the types of spending that tend to compete directly against each other for tax dollars. I nearly weep to think of what might have been had any large fraction of military spending been instead diverted to keeping more research alive or speeding it up. Most research efforts are easily greatly accelerated with more money.
Every dollar spent on research consistently returns on average 3 dollars in economic impact. Military spending barely breaks even. And any military research can take a long time to trickle it's benefits to the general economy due to classified information red tape constraints. Often a technical breakthrough in a military research effort can take so long to become widely available that by the time it does other non classified solutions have been independently derived that make the would be military research contribution zero for the wider economy.
Our military is only good for winning wars overseas and what the hell use has that been to us lately?
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Jon Miller
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as everyone who has palyed civ knows
if you make a large army, you either need to use it, or threaten with it to make your competitors spend the same (or more) resources on their armies
so the two winning points are:
1. if you have a hugely dominant army, and can easily browbeat others to do your bidding...
2. if you have a decent army, and it forces others to spend a lot (as much as you?) on theirs, but none gets used (you need a better economy, or to force them to spend more then you to make this worth while)
during the cold war we did 2.
we are currently trying to do 1., while I admit that our army is very dominant, it can't force people to do our bidding all that well, so I think that we are failing right now
Jon Miller
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Geronimo
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st cloud USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Yeah, we can see how well a downsized military is doing in Iraq. |
Iraq is a poster child for abandoning reliance on a vast expensive military to pursue vast expensive foreign adventures which in turn pursue vaguely defined global geopolitical agendas. The direct cost of the whole action and the earlier necessary cost of the means to pursue it obviously vastly exceed whatever benefit we might imagine accrues from pursuing such geopolitical agendas.
For the cost of all that military hardware we could probably have established all manner of infrastructure to totally erase our dependence on imported oil. What the hell else is in iraq or the whole middle east that would possibly be of value to our economic well being?
Furthermore from a purely ethical standpoint, our military should never have switched from being the guardian of our political freedom to being the guardian of favorable overseas economic interests. Essentially all of our post cold war military adventures have been about that second objective.
As to your edit about Taiwan. Who cares? If taiwan is in danger they should spend gobs of cash to protect themselves. that's the way it works. They should also obviously pursue defensive alliances but our current 'alliance' in no way commits us to commiting to war with china if china decides force will reunite taiwan and the mainland. We need to limit our alliances to countries that by and large can mainly defend themselves or who belong to large enough military alliances that no single member has to be a superpower to guarentee effective defense against any hypothetical aggressor. Otherwise such alliances are obviously contrary to our vital interests.
Last edited by Geronimo on 23-08-2005 at 11:20
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23-08-2005 05:06
To this day no collider approaching it's capabilities has been built and what have the carriers gotten us in that time? Just a gulf war 1 whose entire legacy of reassertion of UN supremecy in containing aggression was subsequently erased by a gulf war 2.
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