Does America spend too much on Defense?

Your thoughts?

The United States currently spends roughly $1 trillion annually on defense and homeland security. As the country works its way out of—or away from—the 9/11-induced wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is time to assess problems that may lurk in current conditions. Especially with regard to expenditures, the U.S. needs to determine which programs enhance security enough to justify their costs. To do so, it is fundamentally important to make a correct assessment of potential threats to security and prosperity.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/american_prosperity_consensus/2013/10/american_prosperity_consensus_is_excessive_defense_spending_the_most_important.html

 

Yes. That is all.

 

Yes. And defense against whom, exactly? Perhaps a better word would be 'offense'. There are thousands of acres of barely obsolete aircraft, worth billions of dollars, standing around, mothballed, and which will never be used because new military technology has since emerged. America's taxpayers are being fleeced for nothing. What a monumental waste of money.
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgu...a=X&ei=PbR6UtGSGaPA7AanuYG4CQ&ved=0CDgQ9QEwAg
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...pictured-in-stunning-Google-Earth-photos.html

 

It's not all a waste. The fact that the US has a dominant military has kept other nations from developing one. The US will intervene decisively if any European govt was attacked. Same with Central and Latin America. And many other nations throughout the world. The very fact that these govts know that the US will act decisively to prevent their country's collapse is the reason these nations don't spend money developing a military. But remove the US factor, and you will start seeing a lot more nations developing a lot more military. We keep the world stable, like I say all the time, and I want some recognition for our efforts.

 

Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: (*)(*)(*)(*) yeah!

 

Yes and no, I believe there is a lot of money spent in the wrong places

 

It does not!!!

 

No but we spend too much on offense.

 

This. 10 char

 

Few people seem to realize that we are currently in a military competition with China. If the US steps down defense spending and reduces its military involvement in the world China will be quick to replace us.

China is already a huge economic power in the world and the US is already starting to seem less relevant in world politics. As much as I hate the industrial military complex I don't know if I am ready for a world financed and policed by China.

 

You'll find out quick enough if we default on our loans to China.

 

yes, but it's not as simple as changing our budget.. we need to change our foreign policy as a whole


it's one of the reasons why I have a hard time seeing myself voting for someone like Hilary Clinton because I know based on her voting record that her presidency would mean the 5th straight term of George W Bush's foreign policy

 

Possibly. But then again there's ample reason to believe that she was tightly controlled enough by Obama and by his trusted inner circle sycophants that she was little more than his animated sock puppet as the Secretary of State and so we probably don't know what she really would do as president. On the other hand considering that it's hard to imagine a soft on defense Republican becoming president, that political side is also not comforting if your goal is to pragmatically reduce defense spending via changes in foreign policy approaches.

 

Well thats great!!! Let these other nations pay for our military expenses. Are you in?

 

Are you saying china is doing the same thing we did to Russia, out spending them? My question is why do I care if we are number two ot ten or one hundred??

When America is cutting it's own people's throats due to this military madness, its time to call it off and rein it in. Republicans are coming for social security and Medicare, and I should be concerned with a camel jockey in the ME, or Israel? Cut the military by 95% and bring all our troops back to US soil.

 

Military competition with China? Not really.

We are exiting from two wars.

It makes no sense to me that we would continue to spend as much while not at war, as we spent while at war.

We can reduce military spending wisely- using the money to retain our valued veterans, and procuring working military systems that we need, and eliminating those we do not.

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Well the world economy would probably collapse.

And China would do nothing militarily.

 

That's exactly what I thought.

 

Our military spending is driven by our military commitments. Before you start talking about cutting the former you need to decide how you're going to cut the latter. I suggest withdrawing from NATO and publicly announcing we will not intervene in any subsequent military conflict in Europe. And that we are happily in a position to offer some very reasonable deals on truly world class weapons, in case anybody feels the need.

 

I think it would be a mistake to back out on our commitments. Does anyone really think that without the US commitment to Europe since 1945, that European countries would have the same size and/or type of military as they do today? Especially with the Soviets, on average, having 1-2M troops in Eastern Europe, for what, 50 years? I say no, and I say that those countries would have developed much larger forces, and that they would be clashing amongst each other just as they did for hundreds of years before the US intervention in 1941, and its promise and commitment of intervention ever since. Same with Japan.

If you want to see what happens with a general US policy of non-intervention, take a look at where the US doesn't intervene...Africa. Wars and genocide ravage that continent. Now imagine what economies like Europe and Asia could afford, and the likely chaos that will result with the same policy of no US intervention. We will be drawn into that chaos, willingly or not. And the mistakes we make now will make it much more expensive in blood and money later.

Ofc we must find a way to reduce military spending. But complete withdrawal, imo, is not an option. The only way forward is through a strong UN, with the same capability and willingness to intervene as the US has been since WWII. Otherwise, leaders of nations around the world, when faced with the prospect of no more superpower likely to intervene decisively to prevent their hostile takeover from another nation, will over time start to invest much more in the military. The world will get much nastier.

 

Yeah...that's not going to happen.

Even in this day and age the United States trusts Europeans about as far as we can throw them.

Too many dead in WWI and WWII to EVER leave Europe.

AboveAlpha

 

Unless America removes itself from its NATO obligations it remains treaty-bound (as do the other NATO members), to assist any other member state in times of conflict.
You do not "keep the world stable". That is a transparent myth. On the contrary it is in America's geo-political interest to promote instability.
Oh, and by the way, no nuclear-armed nation is any more militarily dominant than any other. Each is capable of reducing the others to smouldering, irradiated desolation-America included (or did you forget about Russia's ICBMs?).

 

Then I'll ask the same question in another thread...what is the reason European nations fought each other constantly for hundreds of years straight, right up till 1945, and then ba'am, 70 years of peace? I say it is the deterrent factor of the US, combined with our commitment to intervene. You say?

 

Depends. If anyone thinks the purpose of our large military is defense of the mainland, you're wrong. If anyone thinks the purpose is to protect our shores and make little nation building excursions like we've done in the Middle East, your wrong. Its designed to contain any future threat and prevent them from any real invasions in the western hemisphere. The idea has long been to stay ahead so that we can prevent such a thing, rather than wait years to catch up as we did in ww2.

Anyone who thinks big invasions like we saw before 1950 again, bear in mind the entire history of humanity, and explain to me what's so fundamentally different today.

 

They refuse to recognize war theory as a science that should be factored in to human decisions, and govt decisions. They should think about what nations' militaries were like before WWII. When Hitler invaded Poland, Poland's cavalry still rode in on horseback. War tech has changed dramatically. I'm afraid without our deterrence factor, militaries are going to get deadlier, around the world. And the old days, in which nations had weeks, months, to see an invasion coming (thus equating to some stability) are gone. No powerful US military acting as a deterrent? Get prepared for instability is what I say.

 

I'm not sure what your point is with this. As far as trust is concerned who do you think has been the more belligerent and destabilising global force in the period since the end of the second world war? If the answer is "America" you get a gold star. Trust works both ways, lest you forget.