Originally Posted by
tornadoken
Or you could take the issue at face value. Maybe he is responding to a 10-year lead-time to kit and crew capability.
Contemplate, after the demise of renegade-Saudi- and drug-funded energy gangsters, a disciplined, equipped sovereign taking up their game of influencing energy supply. Our friend the Shah did that to Holland, 1973.
So: Gulf States' role in energy supply security diminishes, (ex-USSR States') grows - Russia "observes" today in NATO/HQ. 2% GNP? We are junior in Big Issues - say, Spain's role in GW2. 3%? We make some noise. Solo? EU-Force? UK/US/Oz/Canada/some free Europeans (sound familiar? Not France, snug and warm in its nuclear-electric blanket). Try a standing UN Force? What to spend the money on is secondary to first defining our purpose. Ireland and Japan did very well, economically, by being defended through the Cold War by (inter alia, UK). What to do?
Govt. has a problem in getting to voters past the roadblock of sound bite-scribblers ("carpet-bombing"), with no knowledge of history, blagging unprepared to tight deadlines, trying to get their words/minutes out, the other guy's spiked. They do that by conforming to the paymaster's party line...and sloppily researching by picking up rants here.
Think you will find that is already the case, check case in point Iran pricing Oil in Euro and not $, that DID NOT go too well with the spams....
Other case in point, the US's shocking growth in M3/M4, all bought up by the Chinese. They could cripple the spams overnight by dropping the dollar for other currencies/ reinvesting in china.... the balance of power is most definately changing, and its not in our favour ....
