The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.

When all you have is a hammer…

The theory behind the US having a large military is that it acts as a sort of fleet in being - that the US prefers other methods of engaging with countries, and having a stronger military precludes other countries from engaging militarily. In turn, having stable global relations and protected global trade provides the US with a huge economic boon to fund its large military.

That's the theory anyway - our Idiot King and his idiots have completely missed the point of the US military existing and are using it as a primary method of engagement, which is causing the economic boon used to fund the military to evaporate.

As an aside, it's not a huge issue, but China's military costs use different accounting than the US, and seem lower by comparison. Apples to apples, China probably spends about half what the US does on military.

	▲	testing22321 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Apples to apples, China probably spends about half what the US does on military. With fours times the population
	▲	ErroneousBosh 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> the US prefers other methods of engaging with countries, and having a stronger military precludes other countries from engaging militarily If the US has such a strong military why are they always begging European countries to help them with their various totally-not-a-war "actions", like most recently in Iran? Last time the UK got into something in the Middle East with the US we lost more people to "friendly fire" than enemy action. There's no real appetite for that any more.

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tracerbulletx 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean we could just go back to talk softly and carry a big stick. There are options between pacifism and boisterous rabble rousing and picking fights that don't particularly need to be fought without good plans.