"Have a strong military and don't use it."

Is that possible?

Part of the reason the U.S. military is effective is because we are constantly involved in some conflict somewhere.

Russia's military is an embarassment right now and it's obvious they are out of practice.

There is a common conspiracy theory that roughly every decade or so, the US needs to get into a conflict as a means of flexing it's military. Whether it's to showcase the military-industrial complex or keep others in line by sending a warning is up for debate (as it the idea itself).

1983 - Grenada

1991 - Gulf War

2001 - Operation Enduring Freedom

2009 - Troop surge in Afghanistan

They are not out of practice, they were just/are in Syria etc.

They are out-gunned, because Ukraine is being helped by NATO.

Russia was robbed by Putin, and the military was casualty of this corruption.

Did they have a convoy of tanks in Syria? My understanding is that it was primarily air assault. That would seem to support the idea that practice is necessary for an effective military.

This isn't a good argument. The US has friendly neighbors on its northern and southern borders. It has thousands of miles of ocean separating it from Russia or China (neither of which have any major military blue water transport capacity). We could defend the US homeland with a tiny fraction of our current bloated 700+B / yr budget. That money could be going to fix problems that affect the common citizen rather than enriching the shareholders of defense contractors. I don't buy this at all.

Or use those resources to support all people across the world so they don't feel the need to resort to violence. Use it to investigate and reveal abusers (eg., oligarchs), to strengthen education and mechanisms of peaceful resolution.

Each generation must re-remember where we are at now--at the edge of self extinction. Lessons from a pre-nuclear age cannot guide us.

This may be a naive take, but it's something I've thought about a fair bit.

What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead")

But they've taken that money and waged war against people who you can hardly blame for feeling like maybe the West isn't so great. The harder you fight against "Terror" the stronger it gets.

Of course I've vastly oversimplified it, but it just seems like a tragically wasted opportunity.

> What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead")

The easy rebuttal: they're using their schools to indoctrinate our kids into their culture. I mean... this is an argument that is already made today against similar programs instituted by several major global powers (e.g., China).

You can also easily make hay of the mere insinuation that much of the world is in a state where it "needs" to be helped by foreign powers--this is essentially one of the main justifications behind colonization.

you forget / ignore another aspect of conflict: territorial disagreements or historical arguments. some countries or politicians may feel that area of other country supposed to belong to their country based on history or something but that other country is happy with how it is right now. and no amount of charity money or help will solve this.

as we have right now with Russia.

another aspect: EU is doing great job improving new member’s economy and standard of living but after 10 years or so people forget why their country is in better shape and take it for granted. or worse - some politicians might claim that without EU country would be even in better situation.

so.. I don’t think that spending money on random people will make them like you.

No good deed goes unpunished. So it probably wouldn’t work. America already helped Africa with so much aide, but didn’t market the help nearly as much as China did, so it is already forgotten.

It would have been better for the US and the world as a whole if it adopted Keynes' Bancor proposal. What the world economy needs is balanced trade between nations.