Excerpt from this article:
"The Vietnam Cuts. As the United States consolidated its victory in Vietnam, Democrats in Congress, angry at the re-election of President Richard Nixon, decided to defund the military. Where defense spending had represented an average of 19.6% of GDP during the period 1967 through 1972, the budget really began falling after 1968 and the election of Richard Nixon. The result: American helicopters lifting off from our embassy in Saigon as the country fell into Communist hands. The Soviets would invade Afghanistan just a few years later, encouraged by America’s obvious distaste for foreign war. Only the arrival of Ronald Reagan and his huge increases in military expenditures would change the shape of the Cold War.
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"Overall, major defense cuts come with a serious price: the price of emboldened enemies. Unfortunately, the cuts contemplated by Chuck Hagel and company have already borne fruit in an emboldened China in the South China Sea, a resurgent Vladimir Putin-led Russia, an aggressively Islamist Middle East. The problem with military cuts is not merely that they decrease American capacity to make war, though they surely do. The problem is that purposeful and large-scale military decreases send a message to the rest of the world that America is in retreat.
"Sadly, under the Obama administration, that signal is both clear and correctly interpreted."
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