The U.S. has nukes, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. If the nation had a proper defense policy – defending the U.S. – we wouldn’t need all that much more. The U.S. could be defended for a half or less of what the government spends now, which a country that’s $33 trillion in the hole might want to think about. From David Stockman at antiwar.com:
This is part 3 in a series. Read part 1 here. Read part 2 here.
When the Cold War officially ended suddenly in 1991 Washington had one more chance to pivot back to the pre-1914 status quo ante. That is, to a national security policy of Fortress America because there was literally no significant military threat left on the planet.
Post-Soviet Russia was an economic basket case that couldn’t even meet its military payroll and was melting down and selling the Red Army’s tanks and artillery for scrap. China was just emerging from the Great Helmsman’s economic, political and cultural depredations and had embraced Deng Xiaoping proclamation that “to get rich is glorious”.
The implications of the Red Army’s fiscal demise and China’s electing the path of export mercantilism and Red Capitalism were profound.
Russia couldn’t invade the American homeland in a million years and China chose the route of flooding America with shoes, sheets, shirts, toys and electronics. So doing, it made the rule of the communist elites in Beijing dependent upon keeping the custom of 4,000 Walmarts in America, not bombing them out of existence.
In a word, god’s original gift to America – the great moats of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans – could have again become the cornerstone of its national security.
After 1991, therefore, there was no nation on the planet that had the remotest capability to mount a conventional military assault on the U.S. homeland; or that would not have bankrupted itself attempting to create the requisite air and sea-based power projection capabilities – a resource drain that would be vastly larger than even the $900 billion the US currently spends on its own global armada.
Indeed, in the post-cold war world the only thing the US needed was a modest conventional capacity to defend the shorelines and North American airspace against any possible rogue assault and a reliable nuclear deterrent against any state foolish enough to attempt nuclear blackmail.
Got hypersonic missile?
Perfidious Albion has a great moat too but that won’t help when quislings are inside the gates.
Only 37% of submarines are operational for the Navy right now, but the pronouns are fabulous.
Listened to a pod over the weekend about sailors arrested for selling secrets to CCP, their names…Jinchao Wei, Wenheng Zhao.