America has become completely vulnerable preparing to fight the next war with a paradigm from 1945

2seaoat wrote:Tell me how 20 trillion of military capital expense fighting the last war with the same delivery system is going to defend America from Putin's new weapon, or the next new weapon?

Remember Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative? DUH!

Where is a modern Billy Mitchell. I cannot imagine they have not run war games where we are neutralized by small nations who send a rain of inexpensive ballistic missiles and tactical nukes which obliterate that 20 trillion investment and drain on America.

America can be safer will less money spent by investing in Defending America, rather than exporting war and importing profits for MIC.

To make it all even more dangerous, Trump is cutting America out of international trade through his blunders.

First he withdrew from trade agreements, which gifted China, Russia, Canada, and a lot of other countries with far greater international influence, and left America on the sidelines. Now, just to try to appease a few miners, he's putting out these tariffs which will further wreck America's trade by making our products sold overseas more expensive in retaliation. And all this is coupled with the damage he's done to America's brand.

America is getting cut out of its seat at the head of the world's table and stuck off in the kitchen at the kid's table... all while being completely in denial about Russian meddling and doing some ill-chosen saber-rattling.

We are getting screwed, bigly, and we have America's stupidest people to thank for this mess. I'm amazed anyone is still idiotic enough to support this blundering fool. I've never thought they were smart, but now I wonder if they understand how the world works any more than the average first-grader does. My estimation of their cognitive powers drops further every day...

The only thing good out of Trump's blunders is the United States which has for almost a hundred years been a bedrock of predictable rational response has shown the world that we are only as good as the honorable people we elect to the presidency, and that the power we wield in the world is NOT necessarily always for good, and in fact can be evil. This requires other nations must work harder to seek sanity, and in fact the backlash against America, may temper future leaders across the globe become more careful in their decisions.

zsomething wrote:
America is getting cut out of its seat at the head of the world's table and stuck off in the kitchen at the kid's table... all while being completely in denial about Russian meddling and doing some ill-chosen saber-rattling.

This is an interesting analogy but I think it's incorrect. The U.S. is still at the table, we're just wearing a dunce hat for a bit and have been moved down the side a few places for now. This'll all get sorted out as soon as Trump's gone.

We're the most powerful nation ever and aren't likely to lose that power anytime soon.





We also have the largest economy:

The rest of the world doesn’t even come close.

This year, U.S. GDP should hit $18 trillion.

That means that the U.S. economy is about as large as the next three-largest economies in the world — China, Japan and Germany — combined.

https://www.stockinvestor.com/21676/us-economy-versus-world/

The most recent collapse of an empire is, of course, Britain and they were driven into penury by WWII. So far, that's not happening to us.

Empires do collapse and powerful nations do weaken but I don't think that's happening to us. Yet.

Yeah, I'm hoping we're big enough to handle the hit, and we probably are... but, I'm pretty sure we will be taking a wallop that's definitely not going to be doing us a lot of good, and at a bad time. We'll survive, but I'd rather thrive...

Defense spending as a percentage of GDP puts the U.S. in 25th place.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2034rank.html

China announced their military budget is increasing another 8% this year. China realizes they need more resources to continue economic expansion and to accommodate their ever increasing population. The country with the most to lose (although this is rarely mentioned) is Russia.

gatorfan wrote:Defense spending as a percentage of GDP puts the U.S. in 25th place.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2034rank.html

Which is just another way of saying our economy is so huge, we can afford to spend less, as a percentage of GDP, than 25 other countries and still spend more, in absolute dollars, than the next eight countries COMBINED.

You might also note that oil and gas is the primary driver of the economy in most of those countries while the U.S. has a very mixed economy.

Defense spending as a percentage of GDP is a meaningless statistic.

zsomething wrote:...I'm pretty sure we will be taking a wallop that's definitely not going to be doing us a lot of good, and at a bad time.  

Yeah, this is gonna cost us and it's gonna be fun to watch but as soon as some real crisis happens, everyone will get back in line with their hands out.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/asia_pacific/north-korea-offers-talks-with-united-states-on-curbing-nuclear-program/2018/03/06/91a2b770-2134-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/man-charged-with-hate-crime-after-driving-truck-into-store-he-believed-was-muslim-owned-authorities-say/ar-BBK2OBb?li=BBnbfcL

The stereotypes seem to hold true. Our entire 20 trillion dollar of investment in fighting the last war still has to be populated by these characters.....like what I have been saying for years does ring true.