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Alex_Sanders
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America made a lot of enemies so they need a powerful military -or-
America has a powerful military so they made a lot of enemies?
America has a powerful military so they made a lot of enemies?
Alex_Sanders said:I intend this topic to be factual and historical rather than political.
+1Gokul43201 said:How about this possibility: America made a lot of friends, so they need a powerful military?
russ_watters said:+1
But I also think the question is much more complicated than an easy answer can satisfy.
Ryan - that's good info, if a little thin on post wwii...but my thought on the issue is that after wwii, the US "fought" the cold war against the USSR while the major European powers looked around and saw few significant threats, so they reduced their military expenditures dramatically while we didn't.
After the Cold War, the US operated on a doctrine of being capable of fighting two simultaneous regional wars (recently canceled by Obama) while the European powers assumed a support role.
As a matter of pure opinion, I find it surprising that the major European powers would support a force structure that left none of them capable of fighting a war of any significance on their own.
There's really little need to have a bigger military than we already have. After world war two there was a massive rebuilding of Europe, the only potential threat was the USSR and that was mainly a US/USSR competition. There really aren't any threats of an invasion of Europe, who has the military power and the political inclination to try and take the continent? No one, globalisation and a lack of development in most countries has seen to that.russ_watters said:As a matter of pure opinion, I find it surprising that the major European powers would support a force structure that left none of them capable of fighting a war of any significance on their own.
Yes, there is more to that statement of mine, particularly when it comes to the early days of the Cold War. Germany and France were particularly decimated, so there was just about nothing they could do to protect themselves. They had little choice but to accept the US as The Protector.BobG said:Given Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe during the early days of the Cold War, I find it hard to see how European powers could see few significant threats.
Perhaps there were economic constraints (European countries, both allied and axis suffered the brunt of the war) and perhaps there were constraints created by public opinion (having experienced two major wars on their own soil, Europeans weren't very enthusiastic about supporting military endeavors).
Agreed.Definitely a different reaction than that of the USSR. They were traumatized enough by World War II that they decided to make sure the next war wouldn't be fought in their home country. If there were another war, the USSR planned for it to be fought in Eastern Europe instead of the USSR.
There hasn't been a threat of invasion in the US in somewhere on the order of 150 years, yet to this day we've assumed the role of Protector from invasion for other countries. Just saying there is no invasion threat doesn't tell the whole story. I get that Europeans have a completely different way of thinking, but I do think that it sometimes proves problematic for the countries of Europe. Two easy examples are Iraq and Libya.Ryan said:There really aren't any threats of an invasion of Europe, who has the military power and the political inclination to try and take the continent?
That assertion is supported by post WWII UK defense spending history.russ_watters said:...my thought on the issue is that after wwii, the US "fought" the cold war against the USSR while the major European powers looked around and saw few significant threats, so they reduced their military expenditures dramatically while we didn't.
After the Cold War, the US operated on a doctrine of being capable of fighting two simultaneous regional wars (recently canceled by Obama) while the European powers assumed a support role. ...
Ryan_m_b said:EDIT: I've managed to find this essay on the subject (not sure about its credibility at the moment though). The figures are interesting because they show prior to world war one the US had a relatively low military expenditure; <10% whereas European countries had far higher albiet fluctuating percentages. At around the time of world war two the US expenditure increased dramatically whilst European committment declined.
Ryan_m_b said:Unless a country wants to ensure that it can intervene in multiple countries across the globe I really don't see why such a big army is needed. It's just a waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere.
Could you explain the 13 countries? It is my understanding that the European borders were drawn up at the end of WWII and the USSR's reach in Europe was never extended. Is that not true?mheslep said:I also don't see the reasoning for discounting a European invasion threat post WWII. I count at least 13 countries that fell under Stalinist socialism, most becoming Soviet proxies after WWII.
The states officially subsumed into the USSR (Balkans, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, etc) all disappeared with the creation of the USSR well prior to WWII, which the rest of the world largely acknowledged. Post WWII, the Warsaw Pack countries were naively supposed to remain independent of the USSR, if inside a kind security buffer Stalin claimed he wanted against Germany, as a kind of Soviet version of NATO. By naive, I refer to this kind of statement by FDR on the matter:russ_watters said:Could you explain the 13 countries? It is my understanding that the European borders were drawn up at the end of WWII and the USSR's reach in Europe was never extended. Is that not true?
FDR said:Stalin is not that kind of man. . . He doesn't want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can, and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.
I think the word you are looking for is "isolationist," although I would mark the Spanish American war as the turning point rather than WWI.Pengwuino said:My understanding is that before WWI, the United States was very much against participating in foreign wars (there's a common word for it that is slipping my mind) or starting them.
The Axis nations happened to form a rather nice buffer zone between the Soviet Union and the rest of Western European.
What aviation? The US air force was far superior to that of the Soviet Union throughout the existence of the Soviet Union. The Soviets at times might have had comparable machines. Even then, they never had better pilots. The UN had air superiority in Korea for all but the first few months of that conflict. A decade or so later in Vietnam, the Soviets were so overwhelmed in the air (and they knew it) that they didn't want to play the air warfare game at all.mheslep said:I don't see how that is the case in post WWII of aviation and ballistic missiles.
D H said:The only way the Soviets were going to launch their missiles was if we launched ours first.
Of course! Those earlier first four points about why Western Europe felt safe behind smallish military forces make no mention of the United States military, and go on about a buffer. The US populace was also sick of war after fighting both Germany and Japan. The US consequentially collapsed that colossal American force to the point that it was once again close to initially throwing rocks at the N. Koreans when they first invaded the south in the 50's. The only buffer of consequence between the USSR+Warsaw Pack and W. Europe during the cold war was the US. That was true to some degree about well financed rogue states like Saddam's Iraq (4th largest army in world 1991), Slobodan Milošević's Serbs, and remains true to some degree today against Putin's Russia.D H said:What aviation? The US air force was ...
Ballistic missiles? The first legitimate Soviet ballistic missile wasn't until a decade after the war ended. By that time MAD was already in full swing. There never was a missile gap; the US had the Soviets outgunned ...
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