When congress issued the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution upset the checks and balances system?

Answer 1

For all practical purposes, during the cold war the Defense Budget was unlimited. Everything came under the "heading" of "for National Defense." Another words, for checks and balances, the US was already on a war footing (financially) during the cold war...so nothing was upset; the US simply used the men and equipment (jets, tanks, artillery, ammunition) that it already had for those purposes. With today's military people and equipment things might get upset fighting a Vietnam War, because the US isn't spending the money that it did in the cold war. In fact, US ammunition manufacturing companies, tank & jet building companies are LESS than 1/2 of what they used to be; including US Army, US Air Force, US Navy bases...those were mostly shut down in the 1990's during "Base Closures." Another words, a Vietnam War could NOT be fought today. Today's new jets cost 10 times as much as a Viet War jet; today's new tank (M1 Abrams) costs 10 times as much, same with the new Apaches and Blackhaws...and there's only a fraction of them. Whereas the US had 10,000 choppers in Vietnam, there's only half of that in the whole military. Whereas the US had 10,000 Patton medium tanks, there's only half that number of M1s. Whereas the US had 200 B52 Statroforts in Vietnam, the US only has 95 in it's whole inventory. Over 6,000 F-4 Phantom IIs were available for Vietnam, today's equivalent numbers only in the hundreds. Over 2,000 US jet fighter bombers were destroyed in Vietnam...at that loss rate, today's US Air Force & Naval & Marine air units would be wiped out. Here's the "trade-off"; todays Jets & Tanks & Helicopters are more crash resistent (Aircrewmen survival is better), have smart weapons (only one piece of ordnance necessary to destroy a target compared to hundreds of piece's being deployed at one target). In Vietnam, over 1,000 bombs were expended on ONE bridge...and it still wasn't destroyed. That was only ONE bridge! Hundreds of bridges were attacked during the war. A hundred US jets attacked that bridge; and a half dozen were shot down trying to drop it. Today, one or two, or maybe even three smart bombs could drop a bridge...ONE pilot, ONE aircraft. Today's UAV (Un-manned Aerial Vehicle) can do the same thing, without risking a human being (no pilot/no hostage/no death). That is today's "Trade Off."