I continue to get bombarded in the media about the aggression from Russia.
How the Russians are interfering with various democratic elections around the world.
Yet I wonder.
Nato and its allies spend about 900 billion dollars on defence (of which America contributes about 600 billion dollars). Compared to this is Russian expenditure of about 60 to 70 billion dollars. So Nato is defending itself against the Russian menace?
Of course in my mind, I also wonder about the accuracy of such numbers from either side.
The whole problem started in the Korean war where America and the West were caught by surprise, when North Korea invaded South Korea. The American military were having to play catch up even in the aerial warfare where for a time the Migs outclassed American planes for a while. When China intervened to protect the looming threat to their own borders, the Nato forces were thrown into disarray and a "shameful" route ensued. The United States President, Harry Truman, even threatened nuclear warfare. Eventually a ceasefire was signed but America didn't learn too much as the Vietnam saga was to follow about a decade later.
American Leaders vowed that America would never be caught napping again, and that mindset was the start to the vast American Military/Industrial complex we see today. Yet it comes at a price, a country cannot just make weapons, it has to sell them. So America sells this poison to its allies, to attempt to cover costs. Then misery and horror encompass the globe.
The Soviet Union mass produced the AK47, a military sub machine gun. Millions of these weapons have flooded Africa and millions more have died. Even to this very day in South Africa, these guns continue to be used, especially in heists of the armoured security vans that transport money around.
America and Russia are not the only guilty countries, Britain sells weapons to Saudi Arabia to "defend" themselves against Yemen. Terrible atrocities occur, but the West turns a blind eye due to the oil reserves of the Sheiks. Recently Donald Trump signed a deal with the Saudis worth about a 100 billion dollars.
America was trying to put pressure on India not to buy Russian missile systems. Relations between America and Turkey soured for the same reason.
The power of the military industrial complexes in various countries make the leaders of those countries dance like puppets. The old days of defining military power by the number of nuclear bombs is gone, or is it? In the latest news, President Trump has declared that the Russians are not keeping to the nuclear disarmament treaties and now the Americans are going to update and increase their nuclear arsenals. Makes sense to me, President Trump needs to create jobs, pity he does not follow the example of President Roosevelt and improve the infrastructure of America as was done in the Great Depression of the early 1930's.
Look, Putin is no angel, I would be naive to assume that he does not have an agenda to increase Russian power in a global context. It is also clear that the American economy dwarfs that of Russia. So where is Russia focusing its efforts? In IT? In areas that are not clearly defined as military, that have both an economic value as well as military. The Russians are not a stupid nation, they have tremendous intellectual skills, just look at chess for example.
I wonder if the arms industry is not a poison chalice? When you have to spend so much money to make a missile. Say a million dollars. Now this complex chunk of tin just lies in some military warehouse somewhere. What could have been done with that million dollars to improve agriculture, or the civilian infrastructure, or even the medical resources of the country? Now we multiply that by thousands of times, what a cost a terrible waste of a country's resources. I wonder how much of the American Deficit is made up from military expenditure.
Yet the media must "vindicate" the military expenditure to their public. Threats from other nations must be "created", the mindset of the public changed. Nothing changes, the Soviet Union did the same old thing about their Western decadent enemies. The Nazis did it. The British did it during the Boer War.
So we have all these weapons, and imaginary threats are escalated until we are "justified" in going to war, in using these weapons.
So we sit on a powder keg while time ticks on. What kind of a future do our children have?