The wars fought in the the twentieth century showed the limits of national budgets in supporting conventional warfare. Britain, even without WWII, was bankrupted by vain efforts to keep mits colonial empire together, The same happened to the USSR. Now the US is saying this as well. Playing world hegemon is not worth the $. At a briefing last October, even before the Republican budget crisis, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Cartor described plans to downsize forces to below 490,000 active-duty soldiers a “high risk to meet one major war.”