On Disarmament in the United States
of America
Shrinking
our military has implications
First the
assumptions:
1) Our
nation has isolationist instincts naturally.
The instincts are historical.
2) Past
leaders have done it, like it or not. Often they had to and before the federal
income tax was created.
3) I don't
know if the vote influenced disarmament or not in our past. I don't even know
if the voters had a vote on the subject "in our past". I assume the
voters did not have much choice. I assume the voters paid willingly, to include
through bond drives.
4) National power is more than military power.
5) Disarmament gets people killed early and in
the long run. Death is often from spinning up quickly to catch up; and from
just having wars start when despots misjudge our military weakness.
6) A strong military option helps the diplomatic
options.
7) Having a military is an expensive
responsibility for the federal government as defined in the Constitution.
Second are
the practical implications:
1) If we
won't pay for a national defense, then we won't be able to man our military to
adequate levels. Now the voters should decide what adequate levels are.
2) Manning
our military is a two-fold action. First we have to get enough first term
joiners, then we have to retain enough for the more senior positions.
3) Training
is key to being effective and saving lives. These lives are usually those of
our children.
4) While we
may gain a new joiner (a new person), we retain his or her Family. All people love their Families, and need the
basics to support their Family.
5) In the end it is a job, with periods of fear
involved for so many. For some, the
chance of real combat is less. But in the end, the fear of combat death and
wounding and maiming is universal. A reduced military usually changes these
factors for the worse.
6) Historically we revert to universal military
drafts to get enough people to man our military at minimal pay. So forget the
last four decades of the all volunteer military as a temporary effort.
7) Future leaders will have their options reduced
with a reduced military. One obvious example to me is during the Korean War when
President Truman found out he did not have the Navy aircraft carriers to
accomplish his desired goal. We had apparently disarmed "too much".
Another example is in the Med when our present President got us involved in
Libya, and we only had one ship (a command ship to boot) in the area at the time. That's a big
reduction from earlier days when the 6th Fleet had teeth. And the total effort suffered, in my opinion,
as a result.
Forecasted
futures follow:
1) Unilateral disarmament usually leads to wars
that would probably not have happened otherwise. Rather they would boil at the
lower levels, like "man's inhumanity to man", which is bad enough.
Think of starvation in Sudan, or the recent Chinese ADIZ in the East China Sea
that will restrict commerce, and may conquer a territory by means less than war.
All these kinds of things will affect us in the USA and the rest of the world,
too.
2) Conflicts, usually regional, seem to be constant
usually as long as humans are involved
3) Which course of action in the USA (as to
being thrifty) in the long run is a
voters decision.
4) There will continue to be fighting conflicts
about liberation, often legitimate in the eye of the beholder too. Often these
wars of liberation will involve peoples and tribes, and not nation-states.
5) While the USA may disarm itself, others may not, and observations suggest most
are not disarming in 2013. In this case of disarmament, then the boiling
cauldron gets real interesting as to what is brewed. For obvious examples, imagine
a nuclear buying spree in the
Middle East, or the Japanese using their own nuclear capability (probably from
the early 1960's) as a way to solve their own Chinese problem. And of course
the Chinese have their own nuclear weapons, and the downrange impacts generally
flow towards the west coasts of America
and Canada.
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