War

Here's a few posts i put up on www.recom.org forum. It's a very interesting forum about Education stuff mainly but there are other categories. This posts are ones that were put up in the "What i don't like about Malaysia?" thread.

I think we don't need a strong military. We don't need submarines (except for scientific research purposes), We don't need fighter jets and most importantly we don't 600 million ringgit commission to Abdul Razak Baginda (the altantuya guy) Company for "service fee" for negotiations with the russians. We don't need to send people to space either while we're at that.

Asean is one of the most stable regions in the world with the last armed conflict in this area being 45 years ago when Indonesia send secret Armed Forces into the jungles in Johor and Sabah/Sarawak. Even then it was the ANZ (Australia and New Zealand Joint Armed Forces) which did most of the fighting. We need a very strong navy though. That is to protect our coastline because we collectively as a country have one of the longest coastline/land mass ratio.

Other countries may spend lots of money on defence because they may see it being very important to them. We should not get involved in an arms race because it benefits no one except the Russian and American arms manufacturers. Anyway who is going to attack us? Singapore?! Thailand? Indonesia? These countries have much more to lose than to gain by attacking us. If Singapore attack us they will not have food or water as nearly all their raw food/processed food and water is imported from Malaysia. Thailand is too busy sorting out their own internal problems to even think about attacking anybody and Indonesia will probably kill their own livelihood if they attack us. ( US$ 2.3 billion was sent to Indonesia last year alone by Indonesians working in Malaysia).

If any of the big powers (US, Russia, China, India, UK etc.) decide to attack us no matter how much we spend on defence we will still lose. Thus defence spending is of little to no use. Better use the money to create a more highly trained, larger, better paid police force. I would much sooner finance 70,000 more cops who work hard than 300,000 army who do nothing with my
taxes.

Soon after this post another forumer said this. Quote "Alepbing"

this is what i was saying... surrendering before even begin the war.sorry lah, i dont mean to offend you, but somehow you are being typical malaysian by underestimating your own country. sorry.

My reply to him was as such.

Haha i can't resist not replying. I don't underestimate my own country. I think realistically. Don't need to talk about superpowers la even Taiwan's military spending is equivalent to half of our governmental revenue. What do we gain from war? Why should violence even be an option? What has any nation gained from fighting before? It only cause untold suffering, loss of life and the hollow moral victory from fighting is always offset by the pain it causes to all parties involved. If there is one thing that history taught us it's that war always ends up causing another war. Bismarck's War of Unification was a contributor to the First World War, which then became the main reason for the Second World War, which caused the Cold War, during which The Korean War, The Vietnam war, the cuban conflict, the afghan war and untold number of skirmishes occured. The arms buildup from these wars and the bad decisions involved during the Cold war was a main contributing factor to the Gulf War in 1990 and even the current "war on terror". Study history mate, lots to learn there. Which brings me to my final point. What better way to discourage war than to not have an army.

Who do you agree with? Do you think war is essential or do you think war can be dispensed with? Personally you know my views, I feel war is useless and causes more pain than gain. From an economists perspective it fails it's cost/benefit analysis. But i want to know what other people feel about this.