This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Peter Husey about the readiness of the U.S.

commands, especially the missile silos that need to be updated entirely from the minute man of the

20th century to the central of the 21st, but so much more needs to be done, the Navy, the Air Force,

all of it. Why? Why did it happen?

The peace dividend of the 1990s. Peter explains, peace dividend, while Russia was rebuilding

and while China was aggrandizing. More of this tonight. Well, what we thought was,

as a number of philot, a historians said, it was the end of history.

We didn't have to worry about great power competition.

China was basically with trade.

We were going to turn them into maybe not a democracy, but basically not our enemy.

And Russia, it was considered the totalitarian type stuff you saw in Russia would no longer come back.

And North Korea was considered an irritant, but not a problem.

And the same thing with Iran.

And what we assumed was what made us feel good.

So, as you said, we could spend on the defense budget, it went from $310 billion down to $260.

And then the Republicans took over Congress and said,

whoa, wait a minute, we got a problem.

So the last four years of the Clinton administration,

we did bring it back up to $300 billion.

But over the eight years, the Clinton administration,

cumulatively will loss about a trillion and a half to two trillion dollars in defense

investment and we let our systems atrophy and they got old and they got more and more costly to

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