Can I just sidetrack this conversation? I've seen this new neologism "2 times less", which I infer from context means "half as much", and I don't like it.

Surely '2 times less' is minus 100% less, if the amount originally spent is '1 times'?

It's an illogical phrase to be sure.

I think its like saying:

"2 times (but instead of mutiplying do the oposite thing that makes it smaller)"

Is where the "logic" comes from.

Hm, I bet this parses as well:

"An hour is .5 times more then a half hour."

Although not quite as well.

Unfortunately this is far from new. I tried fighting it for years and just gave up. Save yourself the grief. We already lost.

it is bad grammar: you cannot use comparative adjectives on uncountable nouns

that said, when I read it I did not notice. my brain automagically converted the phrase to half. the context was not lost but it is murky territory

Last president pushed hard for NATO counties to up their military spending to agreed levels. Everyone laughed.

Russia has been an excellent motivator for our allies to get serious on defense spending.

Our absurdly oversized military has prevented a lot of serious wars.

This is revisionist/wrong.

Obama also pushed for more spending in NATO - and got commitments to do so as % of GDP. Growth was generally higher but spending was moving towards the % committed to.

What the last guy did was tried to piss out allies off and destroy NATO. Even then most in the US generally agreed w.r.t defense spending, just thought he was going about getting our allies to do it counter productively and not recognizing the fact that they were spending more (mostly from commitments made during Obama's 2 terms).

Folks who worked with trump claim he was planning on pulling the US out of NATO in his second term:

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-nato-pay-fair-s... https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/obama-warns...

https://www.businessinsider.com/bolton-putin-waiting-for-tru... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

The same guy who thinks NATO should have been abolished and who fawned over Putin?

The guys like him and Putin are ignorant little boys who will thankfully die off soon. We must try to find a different path.

Just drinking the Hillary kool-aid I see.

If I were going to drink any politician's kool-aid, it would have been Bernie's. Hillary Clinton was part of the problem, just as most other sitting politicians are part of the problem.

> The US could spend 2 times less on military and still be the biggest one in the world. And it as allies everywhere.

I don't think it's that simple: stuff costs more in the US vs other big military spenders, large != effective, etc. If the US cut its military budget, it would have to give up capabilities, and that will have bitter consequences (e.g. the liberal order will shrink even further (e.g. goodbye Ukraine, Taiwan, Baltics), China owns the seas, etc.).

Given how some think the lessening of US Navy projection of power and securing shipping lanes around the world is what's leading to global instability, and global stability has been very good for US economics the last 50+ years, a case can probably be made that at least some of that military spending in the past was extremely effective and useful.

The theory is new to me, so I don't know enough about it to know how much I buy into it, but it's an interesting one.

> lessening of US Navy projection of power

While they continue to have more money allocated to them, operational mishaps occur more often, and navies look increasingly vulnerable in a real fight (see for instance the Moskva). Clearly "at least some of that military spending in the past was extremely effective and useful" isn't sufficient guidance on how to continue spending money.

I wonder if this is actually true in practice. I think many of these countries, especially China & India are incentivized to understate how much they actually spend on their defense. Another factor is the cost of labor and goods is so different that even though the US is spending far more actual dollars, the actual output might not be as big of a difference as these articles might have you believe.

Historically, countries almost never understate the strength of their armed forces because that would invite pointless conflicts with weaker adversaries. Unless the former is looking for some casus belli to invade the latter, it leads to the most pointless loss of life where the latter never stood a chance anyway but the former has to waste resources on the defense.

I don't know how that calculus changes in the context of modern superpowers or China's ambitions for Taiwan but that's the reasoning historically.

How can you possibly know how much a country spent on military to conclude they almost never understate their funding?

A perfect reason a country may understate their military spending is to hide their capabilities. For that matter, they may overstate their spending as well.

You have to ask yourself why a country would want to hide (as in demote) their capabilities.

Overstating their capabilities is perfectly understandable.

There’s a paper I read recently that adjusts for specifically military related purchasing power parity, in which case China was spending about 50% and Russia about 30% of the US. And of course in their region that might mean a locally more capable military, or the inability of the US to fight multiple wars simultaneously while maintaining global freedom of navigation for shipping, etc.

A lot of our capabilities is simply being present (overseas bases) and being able to move to a theater of war (logistics).

We are unlikely to ever fight a meaningful war with either Canada or Mexico, at least there are no signs of that ever being a possibility in my lifetime. Our adversaries are pretty much all overseas, and I’m pretty sure the Coast Guard could single-handedly defend against the threat posed by a possible Cuban invasion.

So we have to spend on logistics and overseas bases and support infrastructure for those bases, in addition to our nuclear arsenal, satellites, the War against rust, communications technology, aircraft carriers, aircraft, submarines and artillery and all manner of other things which are intended to keep us in the lead in terms of capabilities, effectiveness and deadliness.

At the point that you're talking about being able to simultaneously fight the next two military powers right in their respective backyards, you're no longer talking about defense.

As for freedom of navigation, China is also in favor of that. It's their lifeblood.

>As for freedom of navigation, China is also in favor of that.

Sorta-kinda. It’s complicated.

Vietnam, the US, the Philippines and others have clashed with China over the “Nine Dash Line.” China— and Taiwan, oddly enough— refuses to respect the ruling of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Tribunal on this matter. They’ve harassed other countries’ fishing vessels and maritime police in the region, sinking at least one. There are ongoing tensions in the area between China and other countries’ navies. China asserts sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, while other countries and the UNCLOS disagree and assert their right to freedom of navigation for military vessels. This has implications for customs and maritime law enforcement.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/07/chinese-vietna...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line

Not so odd in the case of Taiwan: I like them, they’re the China as far as I’m concerned the UN and State Department be damned on this front, but it’s worth remembering that Taiwan officially does not see themselves as just an island nation off the coast of China. They claim the mainland, and all the island territories held by the mainland, and even Mongolia and some other land that the PRC has given up its claims to to settle border disputes. They’re not likely to back down on any of their claims no matter how small.

Some people in Taiwan might be willing to give that up in exchange for a guarantee of independence but as far as I know this is not at all a settled matter for them. It’s very much like North Korea/South Korea.

> China asserts sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, while other countries and the UNCLOS disagree and assert their right to freedom of navigation for military and other countries' navies

China does not object to transit through the South China Sea. China objects to foreign military vessels entering into the territorial waters within 12 miles of what it considers its own islands. The US and its allies conduct these "freedom of navigation" operations explicitly in order to challenge Chinese sovereignty over said islands and reefs.

But what you're discussing here is sovereignty over a certain set of islands and reefs that China (and several other countries) claims, not freedom of navigation through international waters.

Yes, that’s how China sees it. Other countries see the creation of artificial islands and reefs via dredging and landfill as a pretext to restrict navigation in the South China Sea. It’s complicated, hence sort-kinda.

> restrict navigation in the South China Sea

China's aim is, quite clearly, to prevent the US Navy from operating in the South China Sea in the case of a war. That's not a question of freedom of navigation, and the US "freedom of navigation" operations have to go out of their way to go near the islands China claims.

China is additionally interested in the resources under the South China Sea, just as all the other countries that occupy various islands and reefs are. This, again, is not an issue of freedom of navigation.

China isn't about to block shipping through the South China Sea.