Because that's what superpowers do if they want to keep their position as superpowers.
You can, for example, stop policing shipping lanes. But then can't complain once shipments start disappearing as other countries don't take the slack. There is less justification to keep warships near 'interesting' countries in that scenario too. You get to keep the military machine well oiled. And the list goes on.
The US is not doing this out of benevolence.
The United States was the world's superpower on December 6, 1941.
It did not get to that position by keeping the military machine well oiled.
On December 6, 1941, the US vs. rest of world might have been a fair fight. Maybe.
That didn't happen by being the world police.
No, it wouldn't have. The US would likely have lost the fight, especially if you consider that in such a counterfactual world there probably wouldn't have been a WW2 going on for the past few years.
While it is difficult to be more precise about when the US became the top world power than "during WW2", it is pretty clear to most knowledgeable observers that the answer is definitely not before WW2 breaks out (it is at best at parity with Britain). And honestly, I'd be skeptical of putting it before the Guadalcanal Campaign, where the US throws battleships into a cruiser battle because it has run out of cruisers. The point I'd go for is when the Essex carriers start coming online, which is 1943.
The US had industrial power before 1941, before 1911, starting in the 1890s.
The US could turn that into military power any time it wanted to, and in the time period between the world wars, it didn't want to.
After 1941, it wanted to. Because of a lot of lies, but that's another discussion entirely.
If we did not spend those extra tens of billions per year in projecting power, we could better serve our students, workers, retirees, infrastructure, etc. Instead, they go to ensuring Japan, Korea, Philippines, etc. don't have to spend so much on defense.
As China ascends to No. 1, will they take over the spending? (I'd be happy of they were the ones keeping shipping lanes for their own exports open and not us)
History's not on your side for that one. You're talking about the country that, plagued by pirates disturbing its coastal shipping, went to massive expense to construct an enormous system of inland canals running parallel to the coast that the pirates couldn't reach.
If Chinese merchants wanted the sea kept clear, say because they wanted to trade with nearby islands, they had do that in their own private capacity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koxinga
Except that's history. Reality today is not on your side. PRC has more ship building capacity than rest of world combined. Annual production of dead weight tons per year is about 6x-8x more than output US emergency ship building program during WW2. Not to mention most new PRC surface combatants do anti piracy tours out to Africa. If PRC/PLAN wanted to take over piracy protection for her SLOCs, they can basically do so already, plenty of small hulls being retired to coast guard that even they have enough capacity to do it.
This is laughable. If we didn’t spend billions projecting power, we’d be much poorer because world trade would become much more costly for us, as China reshapes it to its own advantage.
China isn’t looking in great shape to do any ‘ascending’ anyway.
OPEC was formed on September 14, 1960. The definition of "world currency" is somewhat nebulous, but for the purposes of determining when the "dollar became the world currency", perhaps the best date to use is the Bretton Woods conference, which set up the main international financial system, establishing that everyone would peg their currencies to the US dollar, as well as the existence of the IMF and the World Bank. This was done--on purpose, not "by accident"--in June, 1944, 16 years before OPEC ever existed. The Bretton Woods system itself collapses in the 1970s.
To me, that is worth a lot.
Sweden had an atomic bomb program which was dropped in the 1970s after assurances from the US to extend its “nuclear umbrella” to protect Sweden.
One big reason Sweden jumped into NATO now is that the Swedish military is, not exactly a shadow of its former self, but very small.
If Sweden would have had an equivalent of the military power it had in say, 1991, I doubt a NATO application would have been made, or at least not as hastily.
The USA and Europe have a role to play in keeping the peace. It's not a accident that China is regularly violating Japanese territorial waters (as they did last week, he 8 mile line here, not exclusive economic zones) and threatening their neighbors over possession of islands that can strangle world trade.
When China (and Russia for that manner) show that they can be apart of a international community based on common principles of human rights, there won't be a need... but until then.
You mean US was unfair to its USSR ally? Cry me a river. Uneasy bedfellows if there ever were, united briefly by the threat of Hitler.
Pax Americana is built not only by treaty but by force. Is it surprising the US wanted to keep its Cold War foe in check around Japanese waters?
Is US pritectibg Europe, or US interests in Europe?
Over the past 40 years the US spending on arms has grown, but fewer and fewer pieces are being produced. Pentagon fails audits.
Now it got to the point where USA cannot supply Ukraine with enough artillery rounds, and they are like the aimplest item to produce. Economy of Russia is like 10x smaller, this should not even be a contest in terms of production.
Imagine if there is a real conflict, and things like cruise missiles need to be replaced, what happens then - you place an order and wait 2 years for it to be delivered? China has 10 the manufacturing capabilty of Russia.
I doubtwe need to spend so much, but why are we not getting our money's worth?
Never in modern history has a country been able to sustain a full-blown war without adapting its production capacity. It's not surprising that an economy dimensioned for peacetime doesn't successfully sustain a war.
> Imagine if there is a real conflict, and things like cruise missiles need to be replaced, what happens then - you place an order and wait 2 years for it to be delivered?
Basically, yes. Always was. As explained in the Vietnam war example [1]: "D to P stocks are those war reserves of ammunition which are stocked in peace time to provide the necessary reservoir of ammunition to sustain combat operations until such time that the planned production base can be activated"
[1]: http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/2005/CMH_2/www.army.mil/cm...