What would be the consequences of ditching the armed forces?

[Cormac]

We couldn't contribute to U.N. peacekeeping.

Also, our special forces play a critical, (but totally under the radar) role against dissidents in our state. This role has been critical since the foundation of the Free State and then the Republic. (Although they've been more or less busy depending on the risk profile).

We would need to retain this activity.

As things stand, we have a defence force, not an army per se. We have a navy that is really a coastguard (our naval activity is curtailed by treaties with England going back to the Treaty. We have an air force that is really only such in name - it has fuck all equipment.

Our defensive strategy is largely infantry based, and will consist of guerilla type conflict. As I understand matters though, we have state of the art shoulder launched ground to air missiles to deal with some threats from the air.

We don't really go in for military adventures overseas.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And eliminating our armed forces would put a few hundred thousand people into the job market immediately, and the people who aren't active duty but supply the military with food, material, etc., would be out of work as well. So you have a few million military and civilian paychecks involved there.

This is actually a very important point. Yes, the armed forces cost the state an awful lot of money, but a certain proportion of it goes back into the economy (and thence to the state) via taxes, multiplier effects, etc.

Everybody wins!

Well, sort of.

The rule of thumb is "one dollar of government spending means five dollars into the economy". (From Macroeconomics, Purdue U., 1995.)

[PsychoSerenity]

I do hope in the near future that governments/countries realise that they can offer each other far more by cooperating than they can by threatening each other with military force.

[Pappa]

I do hope in the near future that governments/countries realise that they can offer each other far more by cooperating than they can by threatening each other with military force.

As much as I'd like to see that, I can't ever imagine it happening unless the human race is replaced with some aliens or something.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I do hope in the near future that governments/countries realise that they can offer each other far more by cooperating than they can by threatening each other with military force.

As much as I'd like to see that, I can't ever imagine it happening unless the human race is replaced with some aliens or something.

I might happen when the humans start out-numbering the people.

[Ian]

Pacifism only works if everybody else in the world is also a pacifist. I don't know if the human race will ever get to that level, though, so until they do militaries will have to exist.

I think Iceland is the only nation in the world with no military to speak of (possibly a few Coast Guard-like boats). They can get away with it because they're isolated enough to have zero threats and zero need for power projection to protect their distant interests. All their interests are nearby, and nobody else is.

Military spending has produced a wealth of technologies and economic surging. The internet, the US Interstate Highway system, radar, GPS, modern prosthetics, etc... all grew out of defense research.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Ian, there is another small country in Africa, IIRC, that doesn't have any armed forces. I had occasion to look this up at Purdue, so the data's only good for c. 1991.

[Pensioner]

Aliens, dude, fucking ass-raping, human eating aliens.

Australians?

[PsychoSerenity]

Military spending has produced a wealth of technologies and economic surging. The internet, the US Interstate Highway system, radar, GPS, modern prosthetics, etc... all grew out of defense research.

That is a really poor argument for having a military.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Military spending has produced a wealth of technologies and economic surging. The internet, the US Interstate Highway system, radar, GPS, modern prosthetics, etc... all grew out of defense research.

That is a really poor argument for having a military.

Actually, I agree that this doesn't justify a military, but it does show how military research and planning can help the public at large.

[Ian]

Military spending has produced a wealth of technologies and economic surging. The internet, the US Interstate Highway system, radar, GPS, modern prosthetics, etc... all grew out of defense research.

That is a really poor argument for having a military.

It's not an argument for having a military. That argument was taken care of in my first sentence about the futility of pacifism.

I'm just pointing out that military research/spending/necessities have historically produced some amazing results. This little system we're communicating on, the internet, was once called ARPA-net and used only by US Defense Department scientists. By 2011, who can overstate the impact the internet has had on the world? No doubt the internet would've been created at some point, but without the push from defense spending, maybe it would be only now getting off the ground instead of getting off the ground in the mid-90s. Who knows.

[PsychoSerenity]

Military spending has produced a wealth of technologies and economic surging. The internet, the US Interstate Highway system, radar, GPS, modern prosthetics, etc... all grew out of defense research.

That is a really poor argument for having a military.

Actually, I agree that this doesn't justify a military, but it does show how military research and planning can help the public at large.

No, even then you can't just rule out what all that effort might have been spent on, if not the military. Any other scientific research and education for example - rather than vast industries manufacturing weapons and training people to kill each other.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Military spending has produced a wealth of technologies and economic surging. The internet, the US Interstate Highway system, radar, GPS, modern prosthetics, etc... all grew out of defense research.

That is a really poor argument for having a military.

Actually, I agree that this doesn't justify a military, but it does show how military research and planning can help the public at large.

No, even then you can't just rule out what all that effort might have been spent on, if not the military. Any other scientific research and education for example - rather than vast industries manufacturing weapons and training people to kill each other.

You have a point. Which is a dimensionless position.

[Robert_S]

You know what I really like. I really like complaining about what my country's military does in other parts of the world. It sure as fuck beats complaining about what some other country's military is doing here.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You know what I really like. I really like complaining about what my country's military does in other parts of the world. It sure as fuck beats complaining about what some other country's military is doing here.

You're welcome.