Doug - That's not exactly what I meant. I did not mean to imply that the USA started all those various wars, merely that it has relied on a military arm which was designed primarily for offensive overseas operations on a very large scale, rather than defensive (defending your own ground) ones. Of course, they do say that the best defence is a good offense don't they? Well...

That the US has done this is partly because of geography. Between 1812 and the Cold War, there really was no power capable of a serious land attack on the continental United States.

England, likewise, built a huge navy which was primarily an offensive weapon, and it allowed them to expand all over the world and establish the biggest colonial empire ever.

In a similar way, the USA has expanded all over the world, and practiced economic colonization, rather than official governmental colonization.

The USA is an empire builder, and the most successful and aggressive one in the world at this particular juncture in history. That's what I meant. They became so by arming for offensive actions, not defensive ones. In 1941 they maneuvered the Japanese into a situation where war was inevitable, then put the big offensive machine into action after the Japanese attack. It took 6 months to get properly in gear after Pearl Harbour...and then the Japanese were doomed.

Some countries which are well armed, but in a defensive stance, are Sweden and Switzerland, for example. This is also partly due to geography, but there was a time when the Swedes were busy aggressively expanding out into the world through their navy. The British, I believe, were the ones who stopped them. Since then, the Swedes have concentrated on defence.

Japan, since the end of WWII, has also adopted a strictly defensive stance.

I don't like it when countries arm in such a way as to lead them into constantly fighting on other people's soil. They do it, not truly for defence, but for expansion, and they dress it up with all kinds of wonderful rhetoric about how they're helping someone else, when they are really just serving their own interests. If their own interests coincide with someone else's they will help them.

That is what's called realpolitik, I believe.

The USA is behaving no differently from previous empires in that sense. Before them it was Germany and Japan (for a few short years), Great Britain, France (under Napoleon), and various others. I wish they would all just leave the rest of the world alone.

- LH