Looks Like The Cold War Isn't About To Heat Up Again - Yet...

The military manoeuvres are said to be the biggest to take place in the post-Soviet period.

You know, in a way this should make me happy, given recent events in my life. A return to an arms race like we had particularly during the Reagan years would be extremely beneficial to me.

But instead, I'm feeling a little bit of relief that the Russians can't get their sub launched ICBMs to fire right with now a second misfire in as many days.

I really kind of grew up during the Reagan years, the end of the Cold War. I remember, as a kid, looking to the sky and wondering if the missiles were already in flight (I thought about a lot of weird things for a kid. Many of them were probably weird for an adult to, but that's beside the point). I remember the first time I saw the B-1B bomber and the pilot was boasting that his plane was the reason we could sleep soundly at night. I remember quite a bit about the fear that the Cold War could instill in an impressionable kid.

I don't want that for my kids.

I don't want them to fear MAD (I only want them to fear me when I'm mad). I don't want them to truly understand the book Alas, Babylon. I don't want them to know what it is like to live knowing that another nation has enough nuclear warheads pointed at you to annihilate your country 10 times over.

I don't want them to know another Cold War.

What concerns me is that the Russians seem to be thinking that they might be able to play a bit of catch-up here. It almost seems as though they think the technological gap is small enough that they might be able to close it. That's not good.

That is the effect of the massive defense cuts we've had. That's the effect of our not continuing to push the envelope. Reagan proposed a 600 ship Navy; we're now on the brink of having less than 300 ships at sea. The Army, the Marines, the Air Force: they're all stretched to their limits also. Our front line fighter jet, the F-15, is Vietnam Era technology. Our premier standoff weapon, the Tomahawk cruise missile, is old enough to have played a role in Tom Clancy's book Red Storm Rising (a book copyrighted in 1986).

It may be too late, but we need to make a more serious commitment to our national defense. Our greatest advantage is the technology gap we've created. It must be maintained. Our soldiers are the best in the world. Don't they deserve the best weapons we can give them?