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Listen to a genius, kids.
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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Yeah but... That is kind of the problem.
Imagine that the US goes full hippie and dismantles its entire military, sending all the money to schools and hospitals and infrastructure and its economy. Fixes poverty, free healthcare, yay!
Pardon my French, but China and Russia would ass duck it into oblivion within a week. THAT is why we can't have nice things. As long as there are dictators out there, we will continue to need armies, unfortunately.
Russia has shown that depending on each other with economies doesn't work to keep the peace, all you need is a greedy bastard who is happy to throw hundreds of thousands of innocent lives into the meat grinder, happy to ruin his countries economy, all so he can play the next tzar.
So like it or no, we NEED armies and given the choice of being ruled by the US or China or Russia, I'll choose the US a hundred times over, as idnlike to stay out of punishment camps for the rest of my life.
Funny how China and Russia combined spend a tiny fraction of what the US does on the military if the US only has it for defense.
Nothing funny about it. USA has a lot more money to spend, and spends a lot of money on overseas defence - basically bases across NATO and beyond - along with maintaining a huge technological advantage against any of its adversaries.
If you look at Russia, it spends a much higher percentage of its GDP on its military than the US - it just happens to be a relatively poorer country (so probably should focus on economic growth than aggressive foreign policy...) - since its invasion of its sovereign neighbour it has only gone on to spend an even higher share of its budget on war machines, further stunting its economic growth and long term prospects. Things the US doesn't need to worry about as much.
China's spending per GDP is difficult to know given their self reported figures are largely regarded as under-reported. Some estimates put their spending at a higher % of GDP than the US as well.
Don't be fooled into thinking Russia and China wouldn't be just as bad, if not worse, than the US if they were able to achieve military dominance. Make no mistake that Russia would have invaded many more of its neighbours by now, and China would have at least invaded Taiwan and likely subjugated many of its other neighbours along with taking control of a huge swathe of international and foreign territorial waters by force.
Personally I am better off with the US having the dominion it does, and I worry for those who will start to fall into the dominion of those other fascist and totalitarian states. But I can also see the evils that the US has perpetrated in order to gain and maintain and dominion.
None of the players have clean hands - don't think for a second any of them wouldn't do the same shit if it could.
Yes, that is what I'm criticizing, thanks for spelling it out.
Comparing military spending by GDP is such a funny metric. It makes literally no sense whatsoever. Do you think countries should just keep spending more and more on their militaries as they develop, even if there is no practical strategic reason to? Do you think that countries with powerful rivals, whose continued survival depends on meeting certain level of military strength, should ignore genuine threats to security if it would mean spending a higher percentage of GDP than other countries? Complete insanity.
The only reason to compare military spending as percentage of GDP instead of absolute numbers is because the numbers are more convenient to your argument. The country with the biggest military is the most militaristic and the biggest threat to the world. Anything else is nonsense.
Really? Because US infrastructure is falling apart. Medical debt and student loans are soaring out of control. Rents are skyrocketing. I could go on, if you like. There's a lot of really important domestic priorities that are getting ignored so that the US can maintain hegemony in every corner of the globe.