2012-10-08 19:11:41.115054+00 by petronius 4 comments
Switzerland has reduced the size of its active reserve army since the fall of the Soviet Union, but still can call up 200,000 citizen soldiers is needed. That's the equivalent of 8 million men in the US. Now they are building up the army again, and buying more jets. What do they know that we don't?
[ related topics: Current Events ]
comments in descending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2012-10-09 10:33:19.26021+00 by: DaveP
I read La Place de la Concorde Suisse a while back (and recommend it if this sort of thing interests you). It's interesting just how the Swiss go about defending themselves. A very large part of it is geography, but as their buildup shows, they're also pretty good at planning ahead.
#Comment Re: made: 2012-10-08 22:30:22.791733+00 by: Dan Lyke
Well, let's see: Rising political party with strong hints of "National Socialism" in Greece making noises about taking back Constantinople, you'd think that'd be going mostly east and you could ignore it, but Italy's got a couple of years of Berlusconi, I'd imagine that'd make any neighboring country nervous, especially given the general strength of the "fuck the EU" attitudes which could easily spill over from Greece.
Germany and France might be tempted to ask Greece for some of those loans back, but that'd make Spain nervous, and...
Yeah, keep on smiling, do the banking, accept the tourist dollars, just make sure that when the time comes to back up those smiles with threats that the threats aren't empty.
#Comment Re: made: 2012-10-08 22:29:14.029818+00 by: Larry Burton
I think they are more concerned with an economic collapse of Europe sort of like what happened in the 1930s. Remember what happened then?
#Comment Re: made: 2012-10-08 20:53:42.753373+00 by: spc476
That we (the US) won't be able to continue to subsidize the defense of Europe much longer?