Is military spending that large a percentage of US tax revenue? Tomahawk missiles and F15s aren't cheap, but I thought Medicare + Social Security chew up a majority of our tax dollars.

>Is military spending that large a percentage of US tax revenue?

Those $600+ billion have to come somewhere, don't they? And that doesn't even account for the unaccountable [0].

It doesn't look that bad in % of GDP because of the US's massive GDP, but in pure numbers, the US spends more money on it's military than the next 8 countries on the list combined.

[0] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army-idUSKCN10U1...

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/the-us-spends-more-on...

Everyone recognizes that. They don't agree that the problem is the U.S. being war hungry as much as the other countries not being willing to chip in. Here's Obama on the subject:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-oba...

""" “Free riders aggravate me,” he told me. Recently, Obama warned that Great Britain would no longer be able to claim a “special relationship” with the United States if it did not commit to spending at least 2 percent of its GDP on defense. “You have to pay your fair share,” Obama told David Cameron, who subsequently met the 2 percent threshold.

Part of his mission as president, Obama explained, is to spur other countries to take action for themselves, rather than wait for the U.S. to lead. The defense of the liberal international order against jihadist terror, Russian adventurism, and Chinese bullying depends in part, he believes, on the willingness of other nations to share the burden with the U.S. """

That's a narrative that works in the US and only in the US.

What are countries supposed to "chip in" for? The deterrence of a future alien invasion like in Independence Day?

Why should the world chip in for US Ambitions that result in massive destruction, like destabilizing the Middle East, while dealing with most of the brunt of the blowback of such US foreign policy decisions, in the form of refugee waves?

Nobody asked you to be "the world police" no matter how much you keep telling yourself that, "the people there asked for US interventions", is a tale many US Americans keep telling themselves to keep the "We are the good guys" narrative intact, but it has little to nothing to do with reality.

Because reality knows no "good guys" or "bad guys", in reality such terms are purely subjective. As much as I like the US as a country and it's people, there's a huge difference in perception in how US Americans see their country vs how the rest of the world perceives their country's actions.

Ugh, as a Pole in lived in Poland being a province of a Russian empire till 1989 and now am living in Poland which is realistically a province of US/EU empire. I much prefer the latter.

Amazing. Have Europeans forgotten the Iron Curtain and and, more recently, the Crimea already?

"Si vis pacem, para bellum"

I actually grew up on both sides of the Iron Curtain, maybe that's why I struggle playing along with this Star Wars like narrative which insists it's "good guys vs bad guys".

No place is perfect and how "bad" a place ends up, always depending on how much an individual adapts to the given circumstances of said place. This holds true regardless of where you are, a democracy, a dictatorship or anything in-between.

Btw: If you want to talk about Crimea then we first need to start talking about Kiev [0]. Of course, that won't happen because then the whole "Russia as aggressor" narrative wouldn't fit as neatly.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa

There might not be "good guys vs bad guys" but there is certainly a "better vs worse" and it's quite plain to see which side of the Iron Curtain, even after its fall, fared better overall, culturally, intellectually, and economically.

That "better" is worth defending against the encroachment of the "worse".

how much would we all have to spend to reverse the re-annexation of crimea? clearly its not enough yet. or lets shoot for a resolution of the whole syria/iraq/israel/lebannon/etc thing. how much would that cost?

does that get paid to the US directly or do we all fund our own militaries that work...under US control? or based on our own ideas?

i'm just trying to figure out how this is supposed to work.

I don't think anyone is suggesting to chip in to reverse the annexation. The point is to have the military that could adequately protect against similar future encroachments.

They do, along with other entitlements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

EDIT: Keep in mind that this is just the budget of the national government. Each state has its own budget that barely goes to military spending at all, instead focusing on entitlements, especially healthcare costs.

Going down to (relative) German level of military spending would free up around $350b (per year). That could go a long way towards improving various social programs. The other issue is that health care in the US seems ridiculously expensive (with doctors making 20x minimum wage and various insurance companies profiteering from a broken system), so in the end this money would buy less health care than in Germany. The same is true with higher education - it's free in most of Europe, but the conditions aren't nearly as lavish as in the US (so again, the money wouldn't improve the situation as much as it could).

I think the two might be linked. Maintaining world domination via the military effects the demand for engineering talent. It's not always direct; consider what Silicon Valley today would be if there hadn't been a DARPA etc.