New Feature -- Lecture Discussion Week I

[dan greenberg]

Well, as the title says, I thought it might be interesting to delve further into what Ian Hall spoke to us on this week. I have a few questions that I will post on this thread, hoping for some responses to them. I hope you have some too, raise them, and we'll get a discussion going. To start off with

Dr. Hall talked about Kant's Costs of War: in money, lives, and mental health. I was wondering, what are the costs of peace? An annual 400 billion dollar defense budget?
And secondly, what does peace gain us? Another cost of peace could be the loss of a shared enemy, and the deterioration of trade and cultural relations between states, as we are seeing today with the Atlantic Divide. In this case, is war actually a good thing? And is George Bush's Foreign Policy, his attempts to create a 'coalition of the willing' a reflection of the democracies' need to have a unifying cause to unite their people, and thus their countries and policies?

Please, tell me what you think, ask your own questions, I'm interested.

dan