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Comment by Sol- | Hacker News Reader

Also seems that having a very capable military that lets you project power around the world also invites that power to be used. See for instance the Iran war. Quite pointless by all accounts and wouldn't have happened if the US didn't have aircraft carriers to send around the world.

So perhaps thriftiness in defense spending would also invite a prioritization in actual defensive capabilities?

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I think the likely result would be more war. It wouldn't be with america, but without anerica providing protection to its allies in the region, the various countries in the region would probably be emboldened to fight it out themselves (im assuming in this scenario that russia and other great powers are also incapable of force projection. Obviously russia is busy right now, but historically they were knee deep in the middle east and much of us involvement now is a legacy of the cold war)

Even in a hypothetical situation where the USA had no aircraft carriers our military probably would have conducted some raids to delay Iran building nuclear weapons. The initial strikes against nuclear facilities were done with B-2 bombers launched from Missouri.

Not to mention US air bases dotted all over the Middle East, the near East, Europe, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean the Arctic…

Iran wouldn't have started to work in nuclear weapons if Bush didn't credibly threaten to invade them.

Hell, Iran didn't actually work into building them before Trump decided to attack them.

The threat that President Bush issued in 2002 was due to Iran being a state sponsor of terrorist groups, which was true then and is still true today. Historians can argue over whether that threat was a good idea at the time but it's too late to retract it now. We have to deal with the actual situation as it obtains today.

As for what Iran's leadership decided and when, we really have very little visibility into that so don't believe anything you hear. We're not even certain which faction is really in control of nuclear weapons policy. (This isn't an endorsement of the recent attacks.)

That's bullshit. He denounced half of all developing countries for sponsoring terrorism. And forgot to denounce all the ones that sponsored the terrorists that had just attacked the US.

> As for what Iran's leadership decided and when, we really have very little visibility into that so don't believe anything you hear.

The had elections at the time, and voted in the candidate promising nuclear weapons at the next year. So no, that's lying propaganda again.

Half? There were approximately 133 developing countries (depending on how you count) during the George W. Bush presidency so please to give us a list of 66 that he "denounced" for sponsoring terrorism.

Of course the reality is that going back to 2001 the US government has only ever designated seven countries as state sponsors of terrorism. Those were: Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Libya, and Iraq.

Elections in Iran don't necessarily mean much in terms of nuclear weapons policy. It's not clear whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually had much power to impact weapons development one way or another. The real decision making authority appears to lie elsewhere.

This is laughably false. The leadership in Tehran is smart, and they know that nukes are the most assured path to the regime's self-preservation. (see: North Korea). They've been trying to build nukes since the 80s.

> Also seems that having a very capable military that lets you project power around the world also invites that power to be used.

I assure you that is a much better problem than the alternative.

Thanks for the assurance!

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