Quote Originally Posted by J Wolfsberger View Post
I think the answer is that we will lose the ability to effectively fight any. Think in terms of 18th and 19th century Spain.
That, I believe has distinct implications for things like small wars, especially. Using the 18th and 19th Century Spain example, we saw Spain go from fighting a series of small wars against people like Simon Bolivar, to fighting one final big war for its imperial life against the United States. Such a decline was primarily a function of Spain's inability to keep a budget as the revenue from gold in it colonies dried up.

This is important today, because the U.S. is the guarantor of much of international security. Unlike Spain, whose decline began well before the Napoleonic wars, and who finally abandoned her global empire quietly at the end of the 19th Century, the US is currently engaged in many small wars throughout the world. Those wars will not go away because of American bankruptcy, and indeed we might find ourselves in a situation where small wars become large ones, without changing scope. (e.g. Iraq/Iran breaks into full on warfare, because the U.S. is unable to guarantee their security.)

I agree that the U.S. will likely lose the capability to fight in wars in any way resembling what it does now, but it will not lose its incentives to manipulate outcomes to its best interest. It seems to me likely, that the U.S. will shift away from a policy of international engagement to one of more cautious isolation. Such a policy could mean that the U.S. only becomes involved when the situation is bad enough (the British are evacuating from Dunkirk again). However, I don't think that a diminished ability to fight wars on America's part will change the nature of wars. Even the wars in which the U.S. is involved in now could, if not successfully concluded and stabilized in some way, could easily turn into Large Wars absent a near-leviathan like the U.S. to underwrite them, which needless to say is very bad indeed.

In other words, it seems likely to me, that unless we control spending, we are likely to see future warfare, which will look a lot like Iraq and Afghanistan, but with way higher casualties, and much less desirable outcomes. While this may seem like I am 'securitizing' the budget debate, it seems to me that there is precious little discussion of an issue that clearly has long term national and international implications.