Re:America is highly vulnerable to a missile attack
by didericis on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @07:06PM
(#28688504)
To be clear I’m not necessarily in favor of a large standing military, have very mixed feelings about it. Am giving voice to the part of me that sees the legitimate reasons to want one.
Violence abroad is very different from the threat of violence at home, and my point was in regards to how destabilizing it is for a society to need to anticipate that risk in daily life. In general that risk is low in most developed countries, and I think it would be higher if there wasn’t a hegemonic superpower/that benefit is under-appreciated.
But I get your point. There is definitely a temptation to use a very big army if you have one, and that’s dangerous.
America has not.
Since America’s wars have not been fought with broad conscription since Korea or any conscription since Vietnam, Americans who don't volunteer for military service have been sheltered from the realities of large scale violence, of which the US is, and has especially become over the time where most Americans were sheltered from this, itself one of the major inflictors of on others.
Which, I think, is an argument against the large standing all-volunteer military, not the argument for it.