Lazarus wrote:
That argument only works so far. Certainly, it's not necessary for the Empire to build millions of warships, even though they could, but consider real world examples. The USA spends massive amounts of money and resources on military hardware which isn't used, and probably never will be, because it's hard to imagine a viable situation where a shooting war between the US and a nation with similar military capabilities could occur. Anti-aircraft batteries, submarines, ICBM's, ship-to-ship missiles...
And your evidencec for this claim? And why we should assume that this represents the state of affairs in the REpublic (even given things like, you know, the Clone Wars.. didn't you watch the movies?)
The UK is still building hunter killer submarines at the cost of £3.5 billion each, which are utterly and entirely useless in actuality. Their only justification for existing is that if we stop building them, we'll lose the capability to build more. It is entirely possible, and indeed likely, that affluent governments will spend massive amounts of money on military procurement that has no practical use, but maintains a theoretical importance. This will apply to the Empire as much as any real world nation.
Really? And where does the capability magically "vanish" to if you stop building something, ,pray tell?