I feel like this is patently deceptive. The DoD’s allocation includes the US’s only socialized medical system and universal income for hundreds of thousands.
The biggest difference in spending between the US and countries like China, Russia, and India is not that we have X times as much or better weapons, it’s that our soldiers and defense contractors are paid US salaries in US dollars.
Also, they’re pulling their numbers from congressional allocations, which include massive amounts of medical and retirement benefits investments. Let’s include all medical and social Benicia for anyone whose served from those other nations and look at the numbers.
Who knows, maybe they don’t change much because those countries don’t even try to take care of their service members? I honestly don’t know because the only numbers are always this skewed metric.
A great chunk of this money should be spent on healthcare, education and infrastructure. Instead, politicians have successfully managed to deceive common taxpayer for decades.
Plenty of successful nations spend a lot on their military, it’s just important to recoup the investment by invading other countries for resources when they get bored so they’re too busy to launch a coup
Of course, spending doesn’t actually directly translate into being able to make decent weapons. Since US relies on a privately owned military industrial complex it runs into the problem of perverse incentives. Companies want to siphon as much public money as they can from the government, and that means making expensive weapons that take a long time to produce and have high maintenance costs. This ensures you have low input costs because you’re not producing much, and that you’re able to keep sucking money out of the system for the few items you do produce. To put this into perspective, it costs ten times as much to produce an artillery shell in US than in Russia, and US is still unable to ramp up its production after a year and a half of war to match Russia.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is famous for its corruption having failed audits for 6 years in a row and is unable to account for $3.8 trillion in military assets.
All of this results in an incredibly expensive and inefficient system that isn’t actually able to produce basic things like artillery shells in large quantities. US military industrial complex is good at doing what it was designed to do, which is to divert taxes from things they’re meant for such as social services and infrastructure into the pockets of the oligarchs who own the war industry.
Yes, the US is bad, we can all agree on that. It is not a forgivable thing in a democratic country to have such an out of control oligarchy.
That said, why would the US or NATO want to ramp up production?
Look at how Russia in 2010. A major player as it had insane weapon stockpiles, nuclear capabilities and weakened but still strong alliances in Eastern Europe in Ukraine and Belarus. It had the EU by the balls through gas shipments. NATO was an irrelevant relic.
How does it look like now? It lost Ukraine as an ally, Belarus is not being helpful either. It is spending a significant portion of its weapon stockpiles on destroying a country that was one of its closest allies, while making money for the US. Every house destroyed is a contract for Blackrock, every fighter shot down is a new sale for Lockheed.
The war in Ukraine is grinding down Russia from being a major power, while the US is making bank off of it. It’s just going “Aw shucks we aren’t able to supply enough munitions to kick out Russia and stop this racket, guess you’ll need to knock out a few thousand more tanks!”
What I’m saying is that neither US nor EU are capable of ramping up production. Despite all the talk over the past year and a half, no serious ramp up in production has been seen. Meanwhile, Europe is now going into a recession and spending increasingly more money on the military is going to require more austerity which will in turn keep driving civil unrest.
Also, not sure what universe you live in where Russia is being ground down from a major power buddy. Russian economy is currently booming even according to western sources, Russian industrial production is at six year high, and Russian global trade is as big as it’s ever been. If you think Russia came out of this worse than the west then you really need to stop guzzling propaganda.
It’s still not enough! Until every red-blooded American has a big red button in their home that launches 10.000 nukes at random coordinates, it won’t be enough!
Realistically our military protects the world against going anti American. We keep every nation in the world wrapped into our economy except for those we specifically kicked out like Cuba. It’s why even nations like Russia and China are so tightly wrapped in our economy that sanctions hurt them. America is the protectors of the world, by force.
Please give me a list of enough threats the US protected Europe from to back your statement. I doubt there are enough to justify those differences, and hence your statement must be doubted until you prove otherwise.
So can you answer the question? Has there been a threat or Russian aggression into Western Europe that was averted due to US involvement? I am yet to see that.
Is your argument not good enough on its own, that you have to engage in personal attacks? No I am not dense. Please keep these comments to yourself. If you can’t engage in a civil discussion, I will report you to moderators.
Do you not understand the concept of deterrence
I do understand it. Now I’d love to see a proof of the presence of a threat that was deterred due to US military budget.
Do you believe for one second that Putin stops with Ukraine if NATO and the US weren’t standing in his way?
I need to see proof to believe that Russia is a threat to the parts of Europe you speak of, and said threat was deterred by US military budget. Otherwise I will continue not believing it.
I want to see evidence of a real threat, with evidence that it was going to happen, but was only avoided due to said deterrence. I believe that would be the textbook definition of deterrence. Anything else is not. But I am open minded if you have an alternate definition that is reasonable.
How many historical examples of this can you come up with, across the world? I’m currently thinking that’s an unreasonable set of requirements.
In my books, having the big gun in the room is deterrence. You don’t need for someone to attempt shit for it to count as deterrence - if nobody is stupid enough to try anything at all you have successfully deterred others.
If they are so good at protecting Europe, why don’t they protect Ukraine, instead of fueling the profits of the military industrial complex? Why do they keep letting hostilities and murder happen? Sounds like they aren’t deterring threats very well.
Ukraine war proves you wrong. When the threat is real, they do not deter it.
This isn’t to mention that Finland has not faced the same circumstances of Ukraine that led up to the war there, which goes back to my feafmongering claim.
But again, if you think Finland is under the same threat as Ukraine (it’s not), the US has failed to protect it. But they have successfully made a lot of profit for military corporations.
They tried to join NATO and they didn’t let them. There was a real threat and they chose not to deter it.
Finland wasn’t under any threat and was allowed to join, around the same time. The country that actually had a known threat wasn’t allowed to join. So they clearly haven’t deterred anything.
When was that? I don’t see when they were denied membership. They wanted into a partnership program that would’ve made them a member, Russian minded president shelved that idea, it was raised again when Russia annexed Crimea and it’s still ongoing.
“At the 2008 Bucharest Summit, the Allies agreed that Georgia and Ukraine will become members of NATO in future.”
“At NATO’s 2023 Vilnius summit it was decided that Ukraine would no longer be required to participate in a Membership Action Plan before joining the alliance.”
Though IIRC you can’t join during an active conflict. That’s sorta the thing, you need to be a member beforehand to reap the benefits. When it happens, then it’s too late. That’s why after Russian attack into Ukraine, Finland and Sweden got such a hurry about it.
Maybe so. However I am not attached to my feelings and definitely open to changing my mind. I just do not see sufficient evidence that Finland was under a threat that was only deterred by US military spending.
I’m not sure if you meant that it was denied or just that it hasn’t become a member (yet). First one isn’t true but second one is. The process is ongoing and they’ll fairly likely become a member at some point, like mentioned.
I just do not see sufficient evidence that Finland was under a threat that was only deterred by US military spending.
We were close to NATO for a long time but felt that actual war in Europe and Russia attacking was too unlikely for us to actually join. Russia had to come and dispel that fantasy.
NATO isn’t supposed to be the only thing preventing it but it sure does bring us security that it won’t happen and if it in some unthinkable scenario did, we wouldn’t be left alone to fight it.
Looking at Russia and how they’ve generally treated their neighbors, saying that NATO has saved Eastern Europeans from trouble is a fairly believable argument IMO. Just look at those who didn’t join and what has happened with them. But of course it’s what ifs.
If they are so good at protecting Europe, why don’t they protect Ukraine
Goalposts moved - initial claim was that the US defense budget protects european countries, not all European countries. If that was the case, even Russia would be included as needing American protection.
I agree, the other commenters moved goalposts. My initial question asked for proof of a threat averted by US military spending. You (not you specifically, whoever is up the comment chain I didn’t check) said Finland. I said that is not a valid example, as there’s no threat. Then you said well there’s a threat, because Ukraine.
The logic doesn’t follow, because if Finland is under the same threat as Ukraine, then why is it that only Finland was protected and not Ukraine? Both wanted to join NATO, but only one actually did. Conveniently the one that isn’t under the threat… But the one that is was not protected.
In the end, we go back to my initial question: can any of you show me a threat to Europe that was averted by the US military spending? I am yet to see it. Your example of Ukraine proves it even more wrong.
The logic doesn’t follow, because if Finland is under the same threat as Ukraine, then why is it that only Finland was protected and not Ukraine?
Are you implying that two different countries facing the same threat should be treated exactly the same?
Both wanted to join NATO, but only one actually did. Conveniently the one that isn’t under the threat… But the one that is was not protected.
Again. You have proposed a catch-22. You are only accepting a valid joining of NATO if a country is undergoing conflict, however NATO does not accept nations that are currently undergoing conflict. Surely you understand that is essentially a declaration of war for all members against the other party.
In the end, we go back to my initial question: can any of you show me a threat to Europe that was averted by the US military spending? I am yet to see it. Your example of Ukraine proves it even more wrong.
I am still waiting for you to provide some historical examples that show how feasible it is for you to require examples of things that were prevented by deterrence. By definition deterrence inhibits behavior. You will not see inhibited behavior, because it is…inhibited.
Once a country is involved in a conflict, they cannot join NATO. You are proposing a logical catch 22 in which countries that join NATO only do so out of fear mongering (in your opinion), and countries that actually are involved in conflicts cannot join NATO, and thus will not be protected by the US. Finally, NATO countries aren’t being attacked, so unless you recognize the value of deterrence, there will never really be a chance to provide examples that fit into the framework you’ve set up.
I hope you do recognize the value of deterrence, and I also hope you recognize someone can’t provide examples of things that were prevented due to deterrence, since they never happened.
The threat of Russian involvement in Ukraine was known wayyyy ahead of the invasion actually occurring. Ukraine tried hard to join NATO to “deter” it but they never allowed it. So yeah, they don’t deter shit.
If Russia had plans to invade Finland like they did Ukraine, we don’t know if that would have gotten them into NATO.
I’m not saying we don’t waste money on defense, and obviously a country with zero threats on its borders can afford to spend less on defense and more on health care, but this chart in particular is a bad way to convey this message
I’m not saying we don’t waste money on defense, and obviously a country with zero threats on its borders can afford to spend less on defense and more on health care,
Don’t we spend way more on health care than military? I read somewhere it is like 4 trillion per year over 4 times more than military. Honestly as sad as this sounds I don’t think an extra trillion would improve the health care system in the US. Personally I think we have plenty of money going to health care, it is just doesn’t seem to be going towards actually healing people.
Don’t we spend more because the industry is extremely inflated? But yeah if it’s something everyone needs it should be subsidized and provided as a public service
1812 if I remember my history was in large part because they wanted to genocide all the natives and the British wanted to establish a nation for the natives (not out of altruism native trade was one of the only things that ever actually made money out of the Americas)
I support a cap at twice a much as our nearest competitor. I believe the US is one of the safest countries in the world (regarding a direct attack on our land) due to our geographical location in the world and the fact that we have more guns than people.
I’m not sure that guarding against attacks overseas, makes us safer. I think we breed a lot of adversaries by pushing our weight around all over the world. Then we get terrorist attacks which the military doesn’t really have much control over.
I’m for a strong military but I think we overshot the mark a bit.
Largest airforce in the world: US airforce. Second largest airforce in the world: US Navy. Third largest airforce in the world: US army.
climatejustice.social
Hot