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On top of the $2 billion in military and police assistance the United States has provided Mexico since 2006, it also provided training to more than 16,000 Mexican security personnel and supplied $4 billion worth of weapons to the country during the same period. One recent media report described a new Mexican law enforcement intelligence facility as "having a direct line of contact with American agencies."
originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: Sovan
In the game Fallout 3, the narrator kicks things off by saying "War. War never changes" or something to that effect.
As thematically appropriate as that phrase might be to the game, it is factually inaccurate. War changes all the time. It was once fought by hordes of blade wielding, burly berserkers who were smashed off their nuts on mushrooms, fought up close and personal, under the arterial shower created by its process.
Nowadays most war is fought at distances ranging from twenty five yards, to thousands of miles away, with projectile weapons, drones, and electronic warfare gear. What is more, where chieftains, and then Kings of whole nations used to make war for arbitrary glory and to solidify treaties, now it is fought almost exclusively for profit as a main concern. The power of private military organisations, and the military industrial complex in general has grown to such scale, that one could conceive of a scenario where PMC go to war on their own, without being directed to, simply because their bosses want extra zeros on their balance sheets this quarter.
There is no reason to expect that without significant curtailment, the power of private military contracting firms will cease to grow even larger as time wears on. War changes all the time, and always has, but it is more of a business now than at any time in human history and THAT is what is so dangerous.
originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: yuppa
Ah, one of those whimsical rhetorical statements then.
Either way, it is hideously inaccurate to say that war never changes. Even if all that changes is the methodology by which ruin is enacted. It is changing now, and if anything, it is changing for the worse.