The Department of Defense's budget is about Six Hundred and Fifty Billion Dollars. It appears too high for peace time. We have friendly relations with both neighboring states. We have huge natural defenses (oceans) to the east and west. We have the nuclear deterrent. We have a well armed population.
We don't need 355 deployable navy vessels. Improving education and health care of our citizens would do more to improve America's economic position than jostling for terrority in the Indian Ocean. Climate change is a bigger treat than terrorism.
1) For posturing. One reason others might not want to fight the US is the presence of a large and very well equipped force that apparently trains for just such an eventuality.
2) The military-industrial complex is how the US economy stays ahead and yet pretends to be capitalist and free-market. If you pump domestic technology companies with trillions of dollars of tax money in the name of defence, they might just produce something valuable (say like the internet).
In every major historical engagement the US has fought it went in woefully under-equipped, under-manned, and out-gunned. It prevailed because it can tool up quickly and out-produce.
You can't tell me that if the entire US fleet was sunk, every tank blown up, that the US couldn't rebuild in a year or two if the public was all-in on support.
Instead the US has this enormous force that, by virtue of merely existing, it feels compelled to use now and then.
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.
The US spends $1 trillion on defense each year. A large component of that money is fuelling the military industrial complex, basically suppoort for the domestic industry. And it isn't just limited to the "classical" military companies. Look up how the CIA helped Oracle.
reply