PBS Newshour 1/6/2011
Excerpt from transcript
ROBERT GATES: But the United States faces a very complicated and dangerous world. We face the situation -- we still are engaged in a major war in Afghanistan. We still have 50,000 troops in Afghanistan -- in Iraq. We have to deal with regimes, in Iran and North Korea that are very unpredictable, developing weapons of mass destruction.
We have strategic modernization programs going on in Russia and China. So, there's a real world out there that has to be dealt with. And the idea that the United States can turn inward and ignore all those developments and pretend that al-Qaida doesn't exist anymore or any of these other challenges exist is just not consistent with the real world.
And my argument is, ever since World War I, when we have come to the end of wars, we have dramatically reduced our defense spending, cut our military forces, and then ended up in another war. And what we have to understand is, a strong military is a deterrent to war, not a cause of war.
And when we have had to rebuild quickly to deal with threats, the cost in blood and treasure has been very high.
Bold emphasis mine
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