> With the rise of China and its exponential military spendings, do you think that decreasing us military budget would be a wise strategic move ?

The budget is essentially unchanged[1]. The value of that budget has increased exponentially because the value of Chinese currency has increased. China has not directed any more of its resources to its military.

Even more foolish is acting like the Chinese military is capable of threatening the US any time soon. Like fuck, at least we still kind of fight proxy wars with Russia; we do nothing of the kind with China. China is totally incapable of force projection outside tiny pacific islands. China is the only nuclear country that has a "no first use" policy on nukes. They have a single aircraft carrier, compared to the US' eleven. The US has as many carriers (which are the single dominant mode of force projection) as the rest of the world combined.

The US military is so absurdly oversized that we would benefit strategically by spending the money on R&D or the economy instead. Until such a time as the US expects to literally fight China, Russia, and the EU at the same time, the military is massively excessive.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_China#/medi...

China is already nearly spending as much as the US is on its military once you adjust for the difference in the cost of personnel (which is half of US military spending), ie adjust for PPP. The US has the best paid soldiers in the world for any major military, which matches up with the US having among the highest median pay of any nation.

When China's economy is another 50% larger, matching where US GDP is at today, you can expect China's real military spending to considerably exceed the US today.

Thanks to drastically lower salaries & benefits, the personnel costs for the Chinese military is a far smaller portion of its total military spending as compared to the US share.

Adjusted PPP comparison: https://i.imgur.com/SY22Whj.png

As much as I like carriers, in an actual war against a true world power, they seem irrelevant to 21st century warfare. They would be so easy to take out with any type of guided weapon, much less the hypersonics that are coming online.

I don't.

I'm surrounded by people who take our position in the world for granted and don't see any problem with gutting our military, though.

I used to get enraged by people who simply want to gut the military, but after a while I find it’s hard to blame them.

We have lived under the protection of the US Military for so long that most have forgotten what a world would be like without it. Eventually you begin to believe that if the military was simply gone things might still be the same, or perhaps even more peaceful.

But they’d be wrong. They simply have no idea what others will do for power.

So... there's this place right next to America, called Canada. And instead of attacking Vietnam, trying to overthrow South American Governments, going deep into debt over nonexistent WMDs, they just don't do military budget.

And magically... they don't get attacked. Funny how that works...

Canada is in NATO, and attacking Canada would automatically put you at war with the USA. You cannot consider Canada's defense policy independent of the USA.

The truth is we live in a post-war era. This is a statistically indisputable fact [1]. My question is who all these odd people are who seem to have some deep emotional need for the world to operate like a game of risk, as opposed to 7 billion apes who don't know each other and don't care.

[1] http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ (Skip to the 14 minute mark if you're impatient)

The "War to end wars" was won and now it will never happen again.

Who would attack Canada? Polar bears?

You joke, but Canada has disputes with Russia over arctic territorial claims.

And that dispute is being resolved [0] on the basis of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea [1].

Interestingly, this convention is signed and ratified basically by the whole world, but not by the US.

[0] https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2019/04/russia-scor...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_t...

Russia's other recent international seizure was Crimea, which was for sure NOT done in accordance with the International Law of the Sea. Canada has, in fact, enacted sanctions against Russia. I posit that if Canada were a softer target, Russia would simply seize the territories, the way they did from the Ukraine.

Look at the map, find Russia, see how large it is. Do you really think it needs more territory?

Canada, like many other countries around the world, enjoys the luxury of being protected by the US and doesn't have to spend as much money on defense.

During WWII, do you think appeasement would have worked?

The reason many evil countries aren't bombing the US and Canada is because they know they would be obliterated by the US military due to past campaigns.

"the luxury of being protected by the US"

Protected from what? From the White Walkers?

Who is there to attack Canada (besides the US itself)? The Great Britain is trying to return the lost colony? France is thinking about taking over the Quebec?

That's a bit more complicated don't you think? 70+ years with America as a superpower (20+ where it is almost the only one in its class) makes it easy to forget that things could have been massively different. Imagine a case where the Soviet Union did not dissolve, but stabilized as a military and economic equal to the US. Would you say that Canada's peace and prosperity would be guaranteed in this alternative universe? What about other countries in eastern Europe or the Middle East?

To give you an couple examples in the current real world, imagine if South Korea or Taiwan didn't have such good relations with America in the post-WW2 peace. It is not that far fetched to think that there could be a single communist Korea, Taiwan could have been swallowed up by mainland China.

It surely is.

I don't think that Canada in your alternative universe would've been worse off than Finland in this one. Finland's neutrality kept it safe ever since the WW2.

WW2 was about conquest and they were invaded by the Russians. Being neutral didn't really save them from the attack.

When push comes to shove, neutral countries eventually need to pick sides or they will be taken over.

You are misinformed, Finland wasn't neutral before WW2 and it wasn't neutral before the Winter War.

The Swiss would disagree. Neutral by constitution..

Swiss Neutrality did not save them in WW2 either, only German strategic calculus and the idea within the German high command that a mountain campaign would be too costly in military terms. It wasn't their neutrality that saved them, it was military deterrence. Push did NOT come to shove for them.

You cannot seriously assert that if Germany beats the UK and Russia, they will decide to simply leave Switzerland alone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum#Nazi_atti...

Yes, funny how you don’t get attacked when you’re a cub with a lion standing behind you.

Not magical at all, there's a basic geographic explanation for why very few countries could invade Canada and a NATO alliance that explains why anyone who could, won't.

And magically... a lot of countries that aren't Canada still get attacked. Funny how that works.

Canada does have a military, and yes, the US is a nuclear deterrent. Also of note is that the US has a lot more enemies- especially among groups that hate freedom, how morally weird we are, or how we butter our toast.

Want to scare the world and become known? Canada probably isn't the place to do so, the US is way bigger, has more news outlets, and enough targets that you can probably hit at least one of them.

Want to show the world how cruel you can be, and inspire revenge? Attack Canada out of the blue- the stereotype of Canadians being super chill and apologizing is international, and attacking them will get everyone and their dog angry at you.

Want to do a lot of damage? US.

Want to show that your country is capable of going toe-to-toe with a first-world country? The USA is your best bet.

As alluded to by other commenters, Canada is also protected because its physical barriers touch the United States', and anything major that affects Canada will also affect the US, too.

There are a significant number of Canadians (notably, the entire Conservative party, the official opposition) who feel that Canada underfunds their military.

If the US only holds its economic ground at gunpoint I don't feel justified living my dainty American lifestyle thanks to boots to the throat of peoples around the world.

Europe endures and prospers without threat of violence or economic imperialism by bomb across the globe.

If you feel that your dainty American lifestyle needs moral justification, I have bad news for you.

Personally, I'll settle for having it over not having it.

East-European states certainly do not think that they can survive without the help of the US.

Source? Last year I was more afraid of Regime Change Attempts in Ukraine at least fueled by NATO/EU. Victoria (Fuck the EU) Nuland was pretty clear the US does not give a shit if Europe burns..

Europe endures and prospers at the expense of the US military forces.

On the other hand, we take the refugees produced by US military and foreign politics. And our countries are the first to crumble into dust if there is another Dr. Strangelove.

The U.S. ensures the safe maritime trade of goods and services around the world. Many European counties do not need to (heavily) invest in their own armed forces because the U.S. is able to provide the necessary protection. These reasons are why I made my previous claim.

The US Military didn't force you to take them.

Right. Just leave those refugees to cook under the sun in an overcrowded, broken down boat in the Mediterranean until they drown. Or be like Hungary: raise a fence on the border, with armed personnel at checkpoints, and hope that shooting people on sight becomes ethically accepted.

What's wrong with you people.

What's wrong with the refugees? Why can't they fix their own country instead of messing up other ones?

The answer to an aggressive and militant China would be the same answer to any upstart nuclear power threatening the world - we have already seen how effective sanctioning Russia has been in the wake of their aggressive imperialism stints in the past decade. So successful as to inspire them to try undermining US elections to get an apologetic administration in place to remove said sanctions.

Sanctioning China economically though is a moralistic move. It has real absolute costs to the US economy, and such sanctions would need the broad consensus support the Russian ones did - if you don't punish aggression unilaterally and in global unison then the aggressor still has inroads into the global economy to ease any impact.

It is never a solution to spend several hundred billion more dollars on weapons of war that are wholly irrelevant to any legitimate threat of conflict with any other nuclear power. They only serve as a dick measuring contest of how much of your economic productivity you can wholly waste before your economy collapses. That is pretty much exactly how the Soviets fell, and the US is too egocentric to realize its going down that road too.

"aggressive imperialism stints"

Nope, just regrettable but necessary reaction to the NATO expansion. Your words, however, perfectly describe the American illegal adventures in Iraq in 2003.

"to try undermining US elections"

If that is what you say Russia was doing, what would you call the American meddling in Russian elections? [0]

[0] 'Yanks to the rescue. The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win.' http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html

You can only impose economical sanctions if you also have the mean to at least contain any military aggression the sanctioned country could take as a reaction.

It would be a wise strategic move to take 75% of your military spending and put it into education, infrastructure, health and reducing social inequality.

I am not an expert, but my feeling is that overwhelming military power is not the only thing that contributes to the survival of an empire (which the US de facto is).

Why not do both? Split it down the middle and make military conscription mandatory for 2 years. After 2 years you get free college. Have an option for non combat roles and places for people with minor health problems. Work with government contractors to have a manufacturing or trade track instead of college.

America's strategic position is far stronger than China's because its cumulative military spending over recent decades places it in an entirely different category from any other power, and because it is part of a powerful trans-Atlantic alliance with Europe. China's military budget is relatively modest compared to the US, and it cannot call upon an ally as powerful as itself. Indeed, the closest peer competitor to China - India - is part of the West's strategic balancing against China.

In any case, the crux of the US-China competition is that the US has a presumption of global primacy, and feels that it cannot even allow a regional power like China to establish itself. All of the problems in the relationship do not disappear if you drop that presumption, but many of them do - and certainly the idea that we should prepare for World War Three does, which in any event, would almost certainly lead to a global nuclear holocaust.

Also, US Presidents have not been 'prevented' from drawing back from the world stage by 'external events'. Events happened, and they responded as such. There was nothing foreordained or deterministic about it. They could have chosen differently.