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Comment by jcranmer

5 days ago

Most countries are roughly the size of a US state. How many US states could be entirely self-sufficient on defense infrastructure?

4 comments

jcranmer

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ghusto  5 days ago

All the ones that were doing so, before they started relying on the America. Believe it or not, the world still span before the USA.

  • jcranmer  5 days ago

    I think you misread the question I asked.

    Nonetheless, even today, the vast majority of countries are not self-sufficient on defense infrastructure, and this has been true for most of the modern era. The most obvious deficiency is in naval terms: the number of countries who have enough of a navy that they can do something about "my shipping is being attacked by pirates" without help from other people is plausibly at most five (US, UK, France, Russia, China), and I have my doubts about half of those.

    • ghusto  3 days ago

      I think it's more than that, the UK for instance, but I agree it's shocking how few. What I meant though, was that they were militarily independent before, and could be again.