On 10/01/2020 1:44 PM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

My experience is that a 'common sense' approach to military budgets & spending doesn't work so well.

After all, wasn't that attempted with the various Naval Treaties of the 20's & 30's?

Didn't really work so well.

My recollection from my world history college course was that the treaties were to ensure that major naval powers stayed the top dogs and to keep the smaller and or WW I losers from being able to challenge them in another war. Of course not having to build a lot of ships also reduced budgets, which unfortunately as you mentioned really did not work out.