Some say that the U.S. spends more on defense and military than any other country combined. Some say that President Obama is cutting and gutting the military to pre World War I I levels. Should the United States cut the defense budget or increase it to a high level like never before - even higher than Ronald Reagan ’ s and George W. Bush’s levels?
What would be the point of increasing it? Any enemies the U.S. will have to fight in the conceivable near future will not be organized states with armies and navies and air forces – or at least, not much in that way. ISIS has a kind of an army, but not much of one by Western standards, and probably not one that could maintain a long partisan resistance VC-style without some foreign power base supporting it, and none of the others. No navy, no air force.
Don’t you want to see a strong and powerful military power like never before?
Only when I masturbate, not otherwise.
Liberals might have never met a social ill they wouldn’t throw money at, but conservatives never met a political challenge they wouldn’t throw defense money at.
That doesn’t even make sense.
And that true in more than the grammatical sense!
Of course increasing it doesn’t make any kind of rational sense.
It only makes sense if those who profit from it get those who don’t to wrap themselves in the flag and emotionally invest in the moral narrative: ‘leader of the free world’, ‘shining beacon’, etc, etc. You’ve had half a century of it so you don’t need me …
Higher spending does not mean better preparedness. I am for smarter spending, the development of more precision response systems, and possibly more autonomous defense arrays. Until Hydra overrides the safeties in SkyNet and targets my compound…
“Some say”? Those shouldn’t be opinions-those should be facts. What are the facts?
I have no problem with defense spending, however all I see is money being spent on offense.
Why, some say Obama earns more money than–than–than Calvin Coolidge! Put together!
But if those enemies are getting stronger vis-à-vis the United States, as China and Russia are, they are more likely to exert their force against the U.S., or in areas where the U.S. would like to influence world events.
And to be clear, the OP’s title should have been written "should the United States **continue to **cut . . . the defense budget. The defense budget measured any way - in current dollars, constant dollars or as a portion of GDP - has decreased since 2010. And with the increases in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, that is likely to continue.
Not saying that reduction is right or wrong, just want to be accurate.
Who does? According to this wikipedia article the US accounts for roughly 1/3 of the world’s military spending. If you go by percentage of GDP or per capita, the US isn’t even number one.
As others said, spending more money doesn’t necessarily mean better. More importantly, we’re spending a lot of money fighting wars that either aren’t really our business, or should at least have greater involvement from other nations. I think part of the reason a lot of other nations that are our allies can get away with lower military budgets is because they know the US will provide the lion’s share of the resources. What if more of these military actions by the UN and NATO were actually shared more evenly?
I’d rather see other countries contribute more in peacekeeping efforts so we don’t have to. And, really, what’s the point of having all of these allies if we’re spending enough to fight a war without any of them. Then, all it really does is provide a way for a regional conflict to escalate to an international incident because one happens to be our ally and the other is Russia’s or China’s or Iran’s or whatever, and we’re all forced to come in and fight based on treaties.
I think more of that money would be better spent domestically building infrastructure, building the economy, investing in science, arts, and education, etc. Hell, we’d probably do better in reducing foreign issues by providing humanitarian aid and providing assistance to regional allies who are probably more knowledgeable and better positioned to make effective military strikes, if needed.
And what do we gain by spending so much on the military? Yeah, no foreign state is going to attack us, but they wouldn’t even if we spent half as much because we’d still spend way more than them, we still have a ton of allies, we’re geographically isolated, and we’re probably one of their major trading partners. Hell, everyone’s scared of China, but China has more to lose by attacking us than to gain if, for no other reason, that their economy depends on trade with us and our allies. Maybe if some kind of new Axis arose between Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc. they might stand a chance against just us, but not when pretty much every other nation in the world would stand against them.
So, really, other than politicians trying to look strong on defense and tough on terror, sucking up to the pro-military pro-nationalist crowd, and getting campaign contributions and bribes from military contractors… why should we be increasing our military budget?
Also, the conservative objection “dependency on the US Gummint makes people soft and lazy” never seems to apply to our allies, who are able to get by with much lower levels of defense spending because Uncle Sucker picks up the slack for them.
The main problem is that the USA spends money on stuff that is essentially useless. for example-Trident Missile submarines-they cost millions/day to run and maintain. The ability to laund a MIRVed nuclear ballistic missile form underwater is not of much use when fighting ISIS. Nor is it of much value when confronting China. We also spend tons of money on high tech junk-like robot horses that can carry supplies for troops. One well-aimed bullet can sever a hydraulic line and render the thing useless. and why do we still train paratroops? They haven’t been used in decades…unless you count disastewrs like Bien Dien Phu. How about Main battle tanks? New robot drones can destroy them easily.
the list goes on and on…and don’t forget-the USA maintains FIVE airforces! (The US Airforce, the Navy air arm, the Marines, air arm, the Army air arm, and the Coast Guard air arm) each with theor own commands, stoff, supplie clerks, etc.-a huge waste of redundancy.
Cut defence … and spend the money on the War on Drugs! :smack:
- estimates are that the US spends $51 billion annually on the War
- in 2008, half a million Americans were incarcerated for drug offences
- the US leads the world in both recreational drug usage and incarceration rates
It needs to be increased – drastically so.
It used to be official doctrine that the US military should have the ability to fight two major regional conflicts (i.e. the Korean War) at the same time. We no longer have that capability.
We should return to the troop levels that we had at the end of the Cold War. That’s the minimum acceptable long-term level.
… seriously?
It depends on whether you believe the military should be about defense – in which case is it grossly oversized – or about policing the American Empire, aka, the world – in which case it should probably be a little larger than it is, but not by much.