(August 4, 2011 at 3:59 pm)I_Blaspheme Wrote: The corollary to this statement is that to protect your nation, one's nation should conduct itself as to not piss off as many other nations as possible.
(August 3, 2011 at 10:53 pm)Aerzia Saerules Arktuos Wrote: Want to protect your nation: maintain wars only on a single or at most a double front. The US military is in a large number of minor conflicts across the world that it is gaining nothing from... and stretched thin it costs more and takes more damage as a whole.
Dead men can't fight back. To protect a nation from potential assault: the best way is to annihilate all of the assaulters.
The only reason to not do this: your nation is too weak to do so.
There certainly is no reason with that much military spending in comparison to not expand. Sure, it pisses a few people off: what are they going to do against a military that massive with top of the line relevancy? Banding together against it leaves the UN open to flanking from Russia and China, both powerful nations in their own right... and it allows the collective middle east to regroup and push back into an offensive war.
There are only benefits to taking advantage of the situation. The fuck does a debt matter past ideology? You cannot have less than nothing... so if you take even a little something you have gained in such a case as they suspend your money and demand compensation for your debt. Regardless of the short term economic effects for the populace: it leads to a very longterm prosperity.
Either you're a republic and you fucking act like one (slash that war budget into maybe a little more than is required for shipping lanes to be kept open)... or you are an executive dictator and you fucking act like it (obliterate your enemies beneath your heels while you still can, and loot everything)
Anything less is as woefully ineffective as a teenager who can't make up her mind if she wants a tattoo or not and gets a little dot, calling the matter resolved by that compromise, instead of having any personal responsibility for their decision. When they later regret having done so or not having gotten a nice tattoo, they will probably blame anything but themselves
Please give me a home where cloud buffalo roam
Where the dear and the strangers can play
Where sometimes is heard a discouraging word
But the skies are not stormy all day
