Sorry about the delayed reply, had to eat breakfast…

re: #399 RogueOne

I don’t see him arguing that it’s the primary factor in starting wars but more about deterrence and how we were able to respond to threats. I happen to think Mr. Boot is fair and generally pretty bright.

Let’s take his idea of pre-World War II deterrence then.

First of all, the United States had a strong isolationist bent in the years leading up to WWII, and it wasn’t until after Pearl Harbor that mindset changed - and even then, there were factions that STILL didn’t want to be involved. The last thing the US citizenry was interested in while struggling to get past the Great Depression was another involvement in a foreign war.
Secondly, Boot’s preparedness ideas reads like a damn game of RISK. In case you forgot, Hitler invaded freaking Russia, who had a standing army of a few MILLION. His theories of having standing armies against a madman hellbent on world domination is simply foolish.

This doesn’t even touch on whether Russia would have possibly aligned with the Axis nations in response to a country halfway around the globe having a military force in Poland and/or France, not to mention whether those countries would even WANT our forces there.

Consider this. Currently, twenty percent of the federal budget goes to military spending, and currently the US outspends every other nation in the world.
COMBINED, and he’s saying that we should keep this pace going, even if it eventually bankrupts us.