Naming it 'defense' is already a huge stretch. I realize every country does this but it is as much or more about projecting power all across the globe as it is defense.

Fwiw, it used to be called the far more accurate Department of War.

George Carlin had a fantastic bit about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0

> I realize every country does this but it is as much or more about projecting power all across the globe as it is defense.

I disagree that "every country" does this. Many countries in Europe and Asia do not use their defense forces as a tool for attacking other countries and getting involved in regional conflicts that were only affecting people in those countries. And countries that do it are usually just "helping" US-lead invasions of countries (an example would be Australia -- the single reason we were ever in the Vietnam War was because of the US).

(While I may be a biased given that America bombed my home country and engaged in a "peacekeeping mission" when I was a child, for a civil war that had been going on for many years and had nothing at all to do with the US, I never understood how Americans can see invasion of other countries as being anything other than that.)

> I disagree that "every country" does this.

I meant that they call their armies/airforces/navies 'defense'.

> Many countries in Europe and Asia do not use their defense forces as a tool for attacking other countries and getting involved in regional conflicts that were only affecting people in those countries.

I wished that were true, but almost all deployments of EU troops over the last 4 decades fall into that category. And there have been a lot of those.

> And countries that do it are usually just "helping" US-lead invasions of countries (an example would be Australia -- the single reason we were ever in the Vietnam War was because of the US).

Ditto Iraq, Afghanistan.

> While I may be a biased given that America bombed my home country and engaged in a "peacekeeping mission" when I was a child, for a civil war that had been going on for many years and had nothing at all to do with the US, I never understood how Americans can see invasion of other countries as being anything other than that.

Agreed, they are invasions, and the worst ones are the ones under some kind of pretext.

Where are you from originally?

There was a lot of EU and NATO forces involved in the Balkans not that long ago

It's not Defense. But I was trying to keep it simple.

Spending on its own isn't the only measure. The US is incredibly wasteful with its military spending where other countries with better political systems are more savvy. Plus the US has to invent 80% of the tech in the first place, something that costs 10x what it does to replicate it.

While the US military is wasteful, I don't think you'll find a military that is enormously less wasteful. After all, the largest line item in the DOD budget by far is salaries.

Cough Nimrod Cough La 85 Cough "the Age of the manned Fighter is over" plenty of countries have inefficient r screwed up military procurement.

Just imagine if we stopped spending on defense in the 80s when the cold war ended and we had to deal with today's Russia with decades old technology

I think we would be fine with a smaller military. Nobody is talking about completely stopping military expenditures. The question is whether it really needs to be as big as it is right now.

Overturning so many regimes in petrol filled countries is a messy business. I think a big chunk of the spending goes to intelligence and misinformation.

Personally I think a big chunk goes to not well thought out missions like Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. It seems nobody is willing to admit that there is no path to winning or ending things so they just keep going and spending a lot of money and energy. And the defense contractors are certainly happy with this.

Or how about having to deal with the rapidly ascendant Chinese military that is annexing vast territory in Asia right now? There's nothing they respect except for strength, they're not even subtle about that fact.

Or if the US hadn't spent over a trillion dollars defending South Korea from the China, USSR, North Korea axis across decades. South Korea would not exist as we know it today. It'd more likely look like North Korea.

There's an exceptionally strong argument for the US working with regional military allies in Europe and Asia on defense and having a very powerful military to match its $20 trillion economy. Should the spending be more like $450 billion or $730 billion - that's the primary debate.

The Cold War ended in the 90s, not when the Wall came down. Now how would we possibly handle all those T-72s with just M1 Abrams? If anyone still fought conventional wars.

We aren't going to go to war with Russia, despite the propaganda that everyone is spreading.

Wars between nuclear countries don't happen any more.

The reason we aren't going to war with Russia is because Russian leaders know that it is impossible to win a war against the current US military.

The reason it's impossible to win a war against the current US military is because the US has spent an obscene amount of money building it for decades.

If the US military were not capable of defending Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics would be under Russian rule today.

No, it is because of the nukes.

Nukes prevent any war from happening between any powerful nation.

If we spent 1 tenth the amount on our military, we'd still have the power to blow up the entire world X times over.

I just think that if you have the ability to destroy the entire world, then that's a powerful enough military and you don't need anything more for defense.

You actually believe that the US would use nuclear weapons against Russia, ensuring the deaths of 10s of millions of Americans and sparking global nuclear war, if Russia invaded Estonia?

The only thing preventing Eastern Europe from being invaded is the conventional military. The US will never risk it's own existence for another country. The Russians know this.

I don't want the US to be involved in proxy wars with other countries.

So no, I don't believe that the US would do that and I am happy about that.

The US would only use Nukes if there was an attack on the US.

I want the US to stay out of all wars that aren't directed related to attacks on US soil and US citizens.

If the EU is worried about invasion, then they should have their own military to defend themselves.

I suspect conventional war is a thing of the past.

Cyber-warfare is going to be where it's at. You spend years infiltrating adversary networks, backdooring critical systems/infrastructure and exfiltrating intelligence so when the time comes for conflict, you already know what cards they're going to play, where all the pieces are on the map and you can shut it all down with a few commands. Then you start your blitzkrieg unopposed.

It's telling Russia, China and North Korea so heavily encourage cyber-espionage and malware development. Meanwhile in the US, we've got idiots passing laws criminalizing mere infosec research. We're handicapping ourselves against a threat our adversaries are all too eager to employ.

India and Pakistan went to war briefly in 1999 and both of them had nuclear weapons at the time (and still do, I think). I wouldn't rule out the possibility of future wars between them.

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

That 700 billion seems small compared to the 2 trillion that we spend on Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid.