US military spending exceeds the next 10 nations COMBINED. Of those 10, half are allies (UK, France, Germany, SK, Japan). Surely, we could cut 20%, still outspend our rivals (China, Russia, India) by >30%, and be ok?

The goal since WW2 has been dominance, not just in Americas, but also in East Asia, Middle East, etc. China, on the other hand, has had the luxury to concentrate its efforts more strategically. To reduce military expenditure, the US would have to dial back the breadth and depth of reach. Giving up on Taiwan, and then letting Korea and Japan fend for themselves against China would probably also be needed if it were to cut back on its ambitions. Nuclear proliferation would be an immediate outcome.

The US could cut back and still compete in the West Pacific/South China see but it would have to focus there very heavily to the detriment of the existing implied obligations to NATO. Part of the US's politically dominant position post WW2 is that we've signed ourselves up to be anywhere in the world fighting a large scale conflict inside of a month with huge stockpiles of everything you need to fight all over the world, including one floating one that can backup the standard land based prepositioned stocks. [0] Granted a lot of that was also enabled by being the only major economy not significantly bombed through the war but that advantage was heavily invested in since then.

[0] Wendover Productions has a great video about the insane amount of logistics dedicated to the goal of never having to wait for materiel practically anywhere in the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIpPuJ_r8Xg

Coincidentally, this whole Russia Ukraine war has pushed most NATO nations to build up their military and re-arm. If Europe can actually defend itself, the US's obligation there reduces significantly.

Yeah and it's much cheaper to operate locally and defensively than it is to have a very expeditionary and overseas force the US has so they /could/ close the capability gap for less money. There is a bit of difficulty having so many different militaries needing to work together but it's something that works with practice.

The issue is not that the US needs to be stronger than China.

The issue is that the US population has a very low tolerance for combat losses (especially losses defending a foreign country), and the Chinese population (read Communist Party) has a much higher one (especially losses towards what they perceive as country reunification). If in a fight the US inflicts one million Chinese casualties, while incurring one hundred thousand, then the US might call it quits.

The US need not only be able to defeat China, but do it with minimal losses. That's why you need to maintain the huge capabilities gap that currently exists.

An interesting question is why you think the military is good when domestic services are bad. Could it be that domestic services are intentionally strangled, the military is used to pry open new markets from weaker countries, and private business benefits and fails to share the bounty with neither (poor) Americans nor with the subject foreigners?

We spend more, separately, on health, social security and income security than the military. Military spending is tied with medicare.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

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Not to mention the existing debt problem. Just the interest alone on the debt is beginning to exceed the amount spent on the military alone. Something needs to be done, and sooner or later, the usual throwing more money at the problem is not going to work.

>Then bringing in federal assets to run an extremely local project (forcing those people to also travel for extended periods of time), with no jurisdiction (fed can't overrule state laws on planning typically) sounds like a disaster.

I won't speak to whether or not its wise to reduce military funding, but your statement about why you can't have non-locals working on local projects runs counter to my experience.

From about 2004 to 2014, the state of Oregon spent somewhere somewhere around $1.3 billion to repair hundreds of bridges. The consultant managing the effort assembled a team of dozens of highway and bridge engineers, who worked closely with Oregon Department of Transportation, the NTSB and the Federal Highway Administration to make sure it all complied. For the record, getting a state to sign off on bending state regulations is typically a lot easier than getting the Fed to sign off on bending Fed regulations, to the extant that if a state has less stringent road requirements, those state requirements only apply on roads not covered by the FHWA.

At the end of the project, most of those consulting engineers then got flown to other states (Florida and Pennsylvania come to mind) to work on projects of similar sizes. Does a transplant from Oregon have more knowledge of local concerns than a native Floridian and Pennsylvanian? Of course not. But it turns out that you can hire local for negotiating with contractors, but you cannot just hire local when it comes to managing billion-dollar construction projects, if those don't happen very often locally.

The only difference between a federal organization to manage projects of this scale and a private consulting firm is that the bill to the taxpayers on the latter is an order of magnitude larger.