In professional sports, leagues have had to impose restraints upon owners of teams since competition among them (combined with nepotism leading to lousy decision-making) cause salaries to escalate. As a result, bargaining with unions tends to be about the split of the income, with each team limited either strictly or not so strictly from spending over a certain level. This provides some competitive balance.
Well, how about we develop a "war cap" limiting either how many wars the US or anyone else fights over a short time frame. Perhaps countries, such as the US, might want to consider restraining themselves from repeatedly fighting in the same region to prevent exhaustion at home and alienating entire neighborhoods abroad. Given that folks seem to be advocating for war hither (Iran) and thither (Syria), perhaps we need to restrain ourselves, even if we allow folks without military experience or kids in harm's way to talk.
So, if we set a Middle East war cap at three for a rolling five year period, the US would be beyond the cap: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya with war-ish activities in Yemen and Somalia. As a result, any war-monger in the US would have to wait until 2015 to start a new war, as Iraq would then be rolling off the list and would no longer count against the cap.*
* The funny thing about all these wars the US has fought, none, except for Afghanistan, have much to do with 9/11. Now, would I waive the cap if the US wanted to attack Saudi Arabia? Hmmm.
On the other hand, perhaps three wars in the same region is too low of a cap? What say you?
3 comments:
Don't forget US war-ish activities in the Philippines and Uganda - that should add a few extra years on the on list as well - perhaps to 2017?
So does this make the U.S. the Washington Redskins of the international system?
Fortunately, baseball doesn't have a salary cap, so the Angels can fight as many wars with the Midwest (e.g getting Pujols) as we want!
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