Hi John,

>>Hmmm, IMO, any democracy in a country with huge economical or regional issues is fragile. A democracy needs to have a solid fundation in order to work. As shown too many times, you cannot force a democracy. That would even apply to the US. With all respect, the civil war in the US is little insignificant dispute compared to what happened over here. Napolean wars, arround 2.5 million, WWI costed about 20 million lives, and WWII about 72 Million. (More than 100 times as much). And don't forget about the number of those increasingly violent wars.

>The Civil War killed off about 620,000 so I wouldn't call it insignificant. And I'm not referring to body county, more like stress to the political system.

In the history of the US it certainly is an important event, though the war of independence is far more important AFAICS from a political pov.

>>The US is a much different cattle of fish. First of all it is very spread out and the density of population is very low, even today. There is much less reason to fight for territorital reasons.

>There's NO reason because we didn't have that history Europe had of every ethnicity hating just every opther one at some time in the past. Illinois has never coveted Indiana, for example.

Well partly because there is no shortage of land. Lets not forget either that americans are just exported europeans, so your fore fathers did have that history. Only few of the wars had to do with ethnicity. Most of them had to do with building up empires (Greek, Roman, Habsburg, Napoleon, WWI, WII), religion (Crusades, spanish inquisition, north ireland), or movements of people caused by food shortage or environmental issues (Vikings, the huns). Those issue simply never arrose (yet) in the US

>>I cannot disagree with that. But what are you trying to say with that? The europeans already has nuclear programs before the war, but suspended that becuase of the US presence: There was less need to develop a nuclear program.

>I wasn't talking nukes, I was speaking to ground and air forces.

IMO, (but correct me if I'm wrong), the US presence in the cold war served two main purposes
1. To have presence in europe, so to be at the source of information.
2. To give a political signal to russia to prevent them from doing stupid things or else they would be in war with the US as well.

Not sure how many troops were there, but the force of the american on esspecially the ground troops were insignificant compared to the military power of the forces already present. It served a geo political purpose.