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Comment by commonturtle | Hacker News Reader

Agree with the need for moderation. But to 'spend slightly less than your opposition' might be insufficient; you don't usually have one opponent but a few. In that case your first opponent knows if you have to spend all your ammunition taking them out you won't have enough resources to fight off the second opponent. So they reason they can push you around quite a bit because you can't afford to retaliate.

IIRC in its heydays the British government had 'the rule of three': a policy of making sure the Royal Navy could take on the top 3 naval powers and still come out ahead. Something like that is what the US is going for today, and I'm not sure they're wrong.

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The US has over 5,000 nuclear warheads. That's more than enough to drop 25 on every single country. I don't think there's any scenario justifying that arsenal.

> I don't think there's any scenario justifying that arsenal.

The scenario isn't based on a need to drop 25 nukes on every other country on earth but to be able to get back at anyone even in the case of a massive unwarned pre-emptive strike.

Same on the Russian side, they probably still also have many more warheads than they need to obliterate any chosen enemy.

Also, these systems takes decades to build, I don't think Putin and his leadership was/is particularly afraid of Bush, Obama or Trump planning a massive pre-emptive strike - or vice versa - these systems are probably in place because of presidents long dead and the risk of future presidents who still aren't more than bullies in elementary school.

Pre-emptive Nuclear strikes are shockingly ineffective vs a country the size of the US with Nuclear submarines. The fastest strike from a sub on each of the coasts gives plenty of time for Nukes in strategic locations to be detected and a strike to be launched.

If it was needed, you can also design a bunker to survive a direct strike and launch after the fact. Though subs in the Great Lakes would be most cost effective option for the US.

Trump made a threat of using nuclear force many times if he had to. Other countries being afraid of US having nukes sounds fair. US then having more nukes also makes sense.

Remember US govt spends trillions on the military complex. All that money has to go somewhere.

I think you’re talking about the Naval Defence Act 1889, which stipulates the Royal Navy to maintain the number of battleships to be at least equal to the sum of next largest TWO navies.[0]

Anyway, back to the point of spending just less than what your (main?) opponent do. Another big problem is that back in Cold War days, it is rather hard to work out your opponent’s exact military capability. US use this to their advantage by starting up Strategic Defence Initiative (aka Star Wars Programme) to bluff the Soviets to spend more of their crippling economic capability to their military, ultimately accelerated their collapse.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Defence_Act_1889

First, the British navy was a subset of total Britaish military spending.

Still, in that situation diplomacy is generally far more cost effective than military capacity. Also, wars between roughly equivalent militaries don’t end in an afternoon and generally favor defense over offense.

Anyway, remember the British Empire failed, as did the Spanish, French, etc. It’s simply not a long term winning strategy.

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