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America pays more to defend countries of the EU than the countries of the EU.

The United States pays for 22 percent of NATO's common fund. Beyond that relatively small amount, the cost of NATO is undefined.

America pays most of the bills for the UN

22 percent is not most.

most of the "peace keeping" forces of the UN turn out to be Americans.

Today, only a couple dozen US troops serve in UN peacekeeping operations

Please reconsider where you are getting your information. Also, there's no reason to be such a jerk.

Henry L. Stimson Center: Space Security Project

No, I'm talking about two separate incidents.

Chernobyl was the nuclear meltdown. Another incident involved a bio-warfare lab leaking anthrax in the city of Sverdlosk located next to it, killing 68 people, in 1979:

Linkie...

That was only to shoot down ICBM's. This is for active strike capability, anywhere in the world in 'seconds'. It is a sword that can be held over the entire world, ready to chop at any second.

An article against weaponization. This could well start an arms race and create an unstable environment where a 'first strike' by a weaker enemy becomes a risk.

Are you really serious? Rwanda is a member of the UN too, but that did not save 800,000 Tutsis from being massacred by the Hutus despite advance warnings and pleas for help. In fact, if you dig into the record, the UN (deliberately, thanks to certain *cough* France *cough* member states) turned a deaf ear to the situation. Relying on the UN for military assistance is suicidal.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Hutu-led Rwandan government the one _doing_ the killing (see summary here)? I agree that the UN should have done more, but comparing this to what would happen if the US was attacked makes no sense.

Either way, time for a reality check. Small African nations are not treated the same as nations which are important enough to be members of the Security Council. It's sad but true. You say below that the UN is dependant on the US for defense, yet you also think that they wouldn't come to our aid? If nothing else, our economic ties to the rest of the world would assure that UN nations would come to our aid, at least in a defensive war (an offensive war is obviously another story!)

Both of those states are NATO members are rely ultimately on the United States for their defense. They could not defend themselves without the US. That's how they pull that trick off.

Defend themselves from who? Who exactly is going to invade Canada in the near future? Remember where I said that you should think about "what's _actually_ going on"? This is what I'm talking about. The enemies of the UN are a few individual nations, not a superpower (a la the Cold War). Some nations actually act like this is the case.

Besides, I've argued that the US military could afford to shrink. I didn't say that it should go away entirely!

Because US allies with the exception of the UK lack the capability to even deploy their forces abroad. Also, they increasingly lack the ability to operate with US forces due to antiquated command, control and communications systems.

Personally, I think that is so wrong it's laughable. You really think that no other military in the world is capable of sending troops abroad except the US and (conveniently) it's one major ally?

So, why do I think you're wrong. Here's a list of UN peacekeeping operations as of Mid 2002 and the percentage of US troops involved in each. Notice that the US supplies an average of 1.5% of troops to these operations. If this article is correct, then even some smaller nations supply thousands of UN Peacekeepers. There's my proof that other nations can deploy their forces. They could do it last year, and I assume that they can still do it now!

Now, where's your proof to back up your claim that only the US and England can deploy forces abroad?

Because it takes a long time to acquire modern warfighting capability.

Actually, I agree with this whole bit, but I was talking about the US gearing _itself_ up for war, by calling up reserves (or instituting a draft), building more weaponry, etc. We're talking about two different things here.

From the points you made, it seems you need to do a lot more informed thinking about modern military affairs.

I hate to tell you this pal, but unsubstantiated claims and misunderstanding what I'm talking about aren't exactly convincing me to listen to you.

Err... you do realize that there's doubt that Patriots shot doubt down any SCUDs at all, don't you? The report from the U.S. House of Representatives is here.

Although this event was very high profile because of the way the perpetrators operated (suicide-style operation in a dense metro line), actions like putting micro-organisms or poisons in the water reserves of a city, for example, are much more likely to happen and would create massive losses of lives. The frightening thing is, it takes guts to go in a metro station and release gas, but it doesn't take any to pollute water, any crackpot could do that and pretty surely get away with it.