It is wise for America and its allies to remember the following quote by the former 19th Century British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston when he referred to the critical necessity to be prepared for any possible war. He said:

“if these defensive works are necessary, it is manifest that they ought to be made with the least possible delay; to spread their completion over 20 or 30 years would be folly unless we could come to an agreement with a chivalrous antagonist, not to molest us till we could inform him we were quite ready to repel his attack.”

This approach is even more relevant today. With the constant advancement of military technology, it often takes many years to produce new armaments. The sooner we advance the building of offensive and defensive weapons the better chance we have of winning the next major war.