Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Is Britain's Military Power More Myth Than Reality?

Daniel Craig © Luke MacGregor / Reuters

RT: James Bond delusion: Britain’s military power an illusion made from myth, says scholar

Britain ignores its dependence on stronger allies and the dilapidated state of its “clapped out” armed forces in favor of a deluded 007 self-image, which came to the fore during the Brexit referendum, according to a leading scholar.

Writing for the Democratic Audit UK website on Tuesday, University of Warwick academic Dr. Mike Finn gave a savage critique of the James Bond self-delusion which helped fuel the EU referendum ‘Leave’ campaign.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: This should not be the case. Britain's defense spending is the fourth largest in the world, but when I read stories like this one .... Navy to lose 'invaluable' only repair ship in cost-cutting (Telegraph), you have to wonder what are they spending their money on.

1 comment:

B.Poster said...

Actually how much money you spend on your military is not very important. If I may use an analogy, in United States football there is a statistic called "time of possession." This measures how much time out of a standard 60 minute game that each team possessed the ball on offense. This statistic has been called by commentators "the least important statistic." These commentators are correct.

The same applies to military spending only military spending by a nations is even less important a statistic when measuring a nation's military prowess than time of possession is to American football.

As such, when comparing military capabilities among nations, it is going to be best to ignore military spending entirely or at the very least reference it as a minor statistic. While military spending is not totally irrelevant in measuring a nation's military capability relative to another nation, it should be the last statistic we focus on. To often it receives WAY to much attention.

Russia and China have militaries that are every bit on par with the United States and in some areas superior to the United States yet they only spend a fraction of the money the US spends on its armed forces. When measuring military abilities, people have been looking at the wrong things in many cases.