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If I were the US, I'd simply make it a matter of official policy to make as many official, unofficial, formal, informal, commercial and personal ties to every c
by nfnaaron 17y ago
If I were the US, I'd simply make it a matter of official policy to make as many official, unofficial, formal, informal, commercial and personal ties to every country in the world as possible, to the maximum extent that any ideology on either side allows.
Yes, certainly we need to maintain defensive and offensive military capabilities, but I think we should be doing much, much more to reduce the need for those capabilities.
- dflock 17y agoThis is, more or less, the original founding intent of the European Union. Given that the last 60 years has been free of major land wars in Europe - the longest period of peace on the continent since the fall of the Roman Empire in ~470AD, it seems to be working fairly well. (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Europaea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Europaea).
- maelstrom 17y agoI think the EU is great, but I wonder how much of that peace can be attributed to both the United States and USSR both having large armies camped through Europe for most of that time.
- nfnaaron 17y agoI had the same thought. The answer is there is no one thing that does/did it. I'm sure it doesn't hurt that Germany and France are closer to partners than combatants.
- dflock 17y agoYeah, external factors like those mentioned obviously play a part, as do internal factors, as taught to us by playing Civilisation - fat happy democracies don't like making war very much, or for very long; it's expensive and you have to get off the couch...