I think it is the way to go. To me, the use of the military is long gone, Nuclear weapons and Special forces seem to be all that's really useful anymore. Why do we need infantry, who are just cannon-fodder? Well, there are several ways to look at this: Mainly, what good is the Army? Occupation. (Iraq). There is no more use for the Army than that. Now, what options does that leave us? Well I believe it leaves us with only 2, either we have an Army, whose explicit purpose is to occupy foreign nations (which means we'll act as an aggressive Empire). Or we reduce our Army, boost our SpecFor and Air Force and Navy, and most importantly, our StratCom. Why? Well no one will be taking away American Autonomy then, now would they? And that's all that really matters. Not whether or not we have a market in Bombay, but if we have self-goverance at home...independent of other people's interests. Now, the Military is good for Business, it helps keep markets stable, but we can do that on a more global level (since the economy is more global anyway). So far, the US has been maintaining a relatively stable Global Market, benefiting Europe, Russia, China, India and so-forth, and yet, we are the only ones supporting them. We should have no debt because of this. They owe us everything, their stable markets, their economies (which we rebuilt after WW2). But I don't think we should care either way, we can contribute to producing Stable Markets, France can, Germany can, Russia can, whatever. But what is going to matter? Nuclear Weapons. We need them. Without them, you are ruled by whoever has them and will want to rule you. Now, I would like to express the FACT, that Hollywood has lied a lot about Nuclear War, it is not the end of the world as we know it. It'll be a pretty devestating fight between those involved, but no more than WW2 was for Europe. The only difference is it is not 6 years, but 6 minutes. But believe me, after that, it's all over, there is no more fighting, there is a winner and a loser. Who loses? The one who has no more Strategic assets. The winner? The one who still has Strategic assets and can use them to threaten Total Annihilation (Counter Cost Strategy against civilian populations). Against say Russia and the US, Nuclear War would mostly be Nuclear Missiles hitting Nuclear Silos (avoiding most Civilians). Against a nation like China which has few Nuclear Missiles, the war would mostly be the other nation pummeling the crap out of China killing a half-billion of their people. Either way, it's pretty good for the US, no death wind will blow our way, no giant cloud will blot out the sun. All these were corn-ball myths purported in the 1980s, and unsubstantiated, based on theories coinciding with unknown events of the then proposed 65mya Bolide Impact. Nuclear Winter, even then, was only proposed to be possible if Nuclear Bombs were to explode everywhere on the planet. Which will not happen, why would we nuke Zimbabwae? Anyone? Nuclear exchange would be between Russia and the US most-likely, if ever, most-likely there would never be an exchange, but forced compromise. And so we can protect ourselves fully with Strategic Warfare. We don't need substantial ground forces, we only need a firm Nuclear Policy, one which the world knows, "we'll use it if you bug us". These are just my initial thoughts on the vast subject of Strategic warfare, maybe when it's not 2am we (as a forum) can try to formulate a real good discussion on Strategic Policy of the Super-Powers.
The army as we know it today can be divided in to to groups: the army that is made and nutured for conquering and expansion of territorial control, and the second is the army that is made and nutured for defensive pourposes . The use of the army today should not be regarded as a way to get are men killed, and there for usless, but as a way to promise that the country the build a army to kill, will never enter are borders, never take our homes or threaten are lives, THAT IS WHY the army is needee.
all types of weapons are needed... nukes have a purpose but you can't fight a war with just nukes. You can't project power by just having nukes. Every once in a while you ahve to actually use your power or people decide to start testing it. You can't make an example with your nukes every now and again... so you've got to have something less apocolyptic to swing around.
