Terrence Fugate wrote:

> Re: "Arguably, if the Federation had a had a smaller military in the
> first place, the System States War, as a whole, would have been
> comparably less destructive (and the Federation's fiscal position
> likely would have been stronger going into the War, absent all that
> "unnecessary" spending on the military -- perhaps strong enough even
> to have avoided the War entirely using "butter" instead of "guns")."
>  But, with a smaller military the Federation might not have been able
> to prevent succession.

Or the Federation military might have had the same problems as the late
Soviet military. Incompetence. Corruption.