Question

As the deadly potential of weapons grows, the problem of war becomes an ever-greater concern. While conservatives claim that a strong military protects our national interests, liberals don’t support military spending to the degree that conservatives do. How do you respond to someone arguing that the best defense is a good offense? Explain your position on this issue.

Answer 1

The 20th century has witnessed an unbeatable growth in the reliance on weaponry as a symbol of power across the world. The two World Wars and the paranaoia of the ‘Doomsday myth’ further created a deep sense of fear about a possible attack from the ‘enemy’. However, my own position about the dependence of weaponry is that military force should ideally act as a deterrent. Instead, the increase in the military budget by the federal government along with the rapid growth of the weapons industry has only created more adversarial effects by creating a public imagination of war and violence as a normal and inevitable reality. Thus, the continued faith of the Conservatists in a nuclear deterrence Policy as the most effective preventive approach to international conflicts, only appears as an archaic formula. The Us military programme failed to create a sens elf fear in other nuclear power sin the world. The end result being that Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, Italy and even Third World countries like India and Pakistan have increased thier nuclear capabilities to an alarming height in order to keep abreast with the looming danger of a war which is taken to lie around the corner in any instance of diplomatic instigations.

Furthermore, from the point of view of local governance, the high costs which are needed to maintain the military budget has put an immensely amount of pressure on education and medical reforms within the country. As a result, a large part of the citizen’s taxes which could be otherwise utilised to defend the country against their mediate threats of economic disparity, poor health status of the racially backward communities, is being directed towards preparing for a war and which only Increased the death toll of young soldiers. In this way, one could even argue that all defense spending is "wasted" if it's successful. The fact remains that a weapons system which prevents an attack may be said to have worked, but is never used.