The thing is, we spend that much and we're not even good imperialists. When was the last time we annexed any territory? Declared a lesser state a protectorate? Or established a new colony? We spend trillions/year to be the world police so our "allies" don't have to while they mock us on twitter.

Annexed? In 2020, there is no need to annex a country to get everything you want from them - on the contrary, it's an administrative nightmare to annex a country when you can stick your military bases there, export your goods there, and make their economy dependent on your country's and your money without it.

How about shaping countries like Venezuela, Iran, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, South Korea, Japan, etc etc etc, all in ways (intended to be) economically beneficial to the US?

If you can stage a coup or rile up and train a militia to fight your proxy war, there is no need for an outdated notion of "imperialism".

The US has the most powerful military the world has ever seen, and that power is not simply being tossed into the dumpster.

We have over 800 military bases in ~70 countries around the world.

We outsource the dirty stuff. The important thing is that there is a market for our bullets and bombs.

The US is not imperialistic, that's just a cute talking point.

That said I do agree we spend too much on our military. We should always spend more than any other nation to ensure dominance, but I'd imagine cutting the budget down would force efficiency and actually improve the military at this point.

However it seemed the person above was saying that militaries in general are bad or murderous which is very different from saying the budget just needs to be reduced.

The US has nukes. Nobody's ever going to attack it directly. Why do you need overwhelming military dominance in conventional forces then? I suspect it has something to do with being able to force point of view by having big stick available to back it up.

There's also a lot of middle ground between a "point of view", by which I assume you mean interests which are not justifiable defense, and behavior so beyond the pale you'd want to melt an entire city to prevent it. Particularly since the pollution and lingering health effects of nukes are so unacceptable compared to conventional alternatives.

Somehow I do not notice middle ground. All I see is the overwhelming force present virtually everywhere you can point your finger on the map bar couple of places where the US dares not to go. Meanwhile I think even with 1/10th of it current force the US can surely defend its territory and citizens. I agree about pollution: depleted uranium and agent orange for example are way more preferable then the alternative.

> The US is not imperialistic, that's just a cute talking point.

Cuba's shiny new banking system, Japan's Navy(?), and Afghanistan's poppy fields disagree.

Sure, there can be a middle ground in spending. But that doesn't change the GP's point: whether it's a massive military or a modest one, the purpose of a military lies in its potential to injure & kill people. As such, so long as you agree that some level of military is needed, you've already crossed the "no killing" line.

The kinds of things that the military would be doing on a cloud platform seem likely to occupy that middle ground.

There's not, because it maintains a world order that would be happily taken up by someone else if the US didn't do it.

There absolutely is a middle ground. It starts with actual audits of the DoD, which requires no reduction of capabilities and have never even been completed once.