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'So there should be an emphasis on 'right-sizing' our military so that i can be prepared to deal with likely threats ...'
'Will to Truth' do you call it, you wisest ones, that which impels you and makes you ardent?
Will for the thinkableness of all being: thus do I call your will!
All being you would make thinkable: for you doubt with good reason whether it be already thinkable.
But it shall accommodate and bend itself to you! So wills your will. Smooth shall it become and subject to the spirit, as its mirror and reflection.
That is your entire will, you wisest ones, as a Will to Power; and even when you speak of good and evil, and of estimates of value.
You would still create a world before which you can bow the knee: such is your ultimate hope and ecstasy...' -- Nietzsche, Self-Surpassing
parapraxis strikes deep
into your mouse it will creep
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Bruce,
I would disagree with your interpretation of Munich as "the appeasement of Hitler and its unfortunate outcome." The truth is the West loved fascism. Munich has been popularly labeled as appeasement but it was really more supportive than that. They were helping Hitler and ultimately hoped the Germans and the Russians would bleed each other to death, which is essentially what happened during World War II.
dave
A backward glance o'er traveled roads of war. With all the blood, fire, horror and betrayal of this history, it's still reassuring to keep our eyes trained on the rear-view mirror -- a good way to avoid looking at the Perfect Storm Building in the Persian Gulf.
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Dave, the anti-Soviet emphasis in the appeasement policy was certainly a major part of it.
I talk about this in the post on the other paper by Jeffrey Record that I link in the first paragraph here. (A book by Record based in part on the material in that paper is due out early in 2007, called The Specter of Munich: Reconsidering the Lessons of Appeasing Hitler.)
But Britain and France did use the word "appeasement" to describe their policy. "Appeasement" wasn't considered a dirty word then; it just meant a policy of concessions. The idea was to concede some of the German demands in hopes that they would stop at the unification of areas that could be seen with some historical justification as traditional German areas. Or, failing that, to encourage them to attack the USSR, not the West.
They weren't wrong in assuming that Hitler wanted to attack Russia, obviously. The two guiding points of Hitler's foreign policy from the early 1920s were killing the Jews and conquering "living space" in the east, i.e., Russia. Everything else was secondary.
But there were other important mistakes, as well. France had an assertive political policy toward Germany but a strictly defensive military policy. They misread Hitler's intentions. They underestimated Germany's army and vastly over-rated its air power.
Record's online paper on the appeasement policy is worth reading in full. It's definitely a departure from the tired conventional wisdom on the subject, and in a postive, reality-based sense.
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