The War Chest
I am reading a very interesting book edited by Robert Cowley, “What if?: The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been
It is an anthology of essays that look into historic events which would have had drastic consequences for the way we live today if some small event had not happened.
Ignoring the entire point of the book I have noticed that throughout history, wars have depleted the treasuries of the countries involved. If one country had more disposable gold than another, it usually won.
When both treasuries became empty a truce usually ended the fighting.
Often a country would attempt to borrow money from another country without success which caused the conflict to end. It was an interesting case of international politics and financing.
The world is a different place today. Perhaps the real reason that the Soviet Union collapsed was not because of Ronald Reagan but because it ran out of money.
This I don’t know with any certainty but it is probable.
Being a Korean War veteran I took the following oath:
“I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR THAT I WILL SUPPORT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AGAINST ALL ENEMIES, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC…SO HELP ME GOD.”
I still feel that way. I want my readers to be absolutely sure of my views regarding our military-past and present.
I am in favor of whatever it takes to preserve the United States and our way of life but I wonder who we will go to when we run out of money.
Not only are we dealing with the cost of the war itself but we are shipping our money by the bucketfuls to people who don’t have our best interests at heart and who may be stockpiling it to finance their war against us.
What if?
Couldn’t agree more.
That we supplied sophisticated armament to a foreign power in the form of stinger missiles that they turned around later and used on us should have smartened us up some.
Now were selling smart bombs to Saudi Arabia. I hope that this time we have installed a tamper proof failsafe device that would prevent them from ever being used against us. Integrating a self destruct device into the bomb triggered by satellite transmission should be mandatory.
How much do you suppose China would pay Saudi Arabia for a couple of smart bombs? I’m sure that Russia would also anti up.
I don’t think that politicians have the least foresight of the endgame on anything that they do. They open their mouths and step in a cow pie all the time. They do it so often, that for the most part, they are cow manure from the waist down!
I live in Germany. The germans led a lot of wars and what was the outcome? The european community proves, that even longtime enemies become friends if you design a win win situation for everyone. The USA is a rich country which could prosper beyond no limits and could have friends all around the world, if the americans would consequently design win-win-partnerships.
Besides a lot of the money, us-government spends on warfare is collected on international finance market. I am not quite sure but isn’t the US-trade balance currently negative?