why are americans scared shitless?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It would be a great relief to have our military all home, and our spending one tenth of what it is now on military.

[SteveB]

Military industrial complexes are kinda obsolete now anyway.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Military industrial complexes are kinda obsolete now anyway.

The people making money off them don't really care, they're only interested in buy another yacht.

[tattuchu]

Scared shirtless, you mean. *flex* *pose* Look at these guns! *kiss* *kiss*

[SteveB]

And trumping up fear to justify the expenditures.

In response to Zilla. Someone got in the crossfire.

[sandinista]

It's a matter of honor, just like the binladen types.

Not sure I understand. Honor?

I don't think fear has anything to do with it. Why did former British, Spanish, and French empires raise and maintain such huge militaries? Did they do so out of fear?

I think fear definitely plays a part. The countries in question had large militaries (I mean, nothing like the money spent in the US), because they all had empires to maintain, new lands to conquer. Is the US maintaining an empire? Some would argue yes. So, I guess if it is not fear it must be the maintenance of empire.

Positions of power attract people who like to possess and wield power, and populous countries with robust economies tend to go a bit overboard with military spending

I think saying "a bit" overboard is vastly understating the issue.

Anyway, military over-expenditure isn't a uniquely American activity.

The fact that the US spends more than the next 13 countries combined...all allies no less is unique.

[Jason]

It's already been said.. it's all about the money.

[Jason]

Taxes pay for military expenditure. Military contractors (Boeing etc..) make billions for more yet more unneeded hardware ordered by politicians and military top brass who are in the pocket of the military contractors. It's a big con. People getting very rich on the backs of the taxpayers.

[Tero]

Sandi, these hawks have all kinds of ideas about people around the world. Israel for example. So any action against percieved allies is taken as a personal insult. Just basically the bully mentality. You know it from the school yard. When they get old, they pretend its honor.

[Ian]

It's silly to look at the military budget and assume it's based on fear.

Granted, some of it is. I think it's a bit of a cultural thing. Psychologically, the US is still an adolescent nation. It was born into war and later found itself neck-deep in a few big ones started by others. Individuals have their own outlooks, but collectively America sees the world today with a mixture of bravado and paranoia, overconfidence mixed with apprehension about the intentions of others (and this is based on a lot of the history between the US and the outside world). This is also a good description of the adolescent mind.

But that's only part of the story. Another big part is the importance of military spending towards the economies of various parts of the US. Cutting it is always difficult; you will not find a single congressman or senator who will nonchalantly shrug his/her shoulders and think that DoD cutbacks in their state (whether bases or defense industries) is fine since it would help the overall federal budget. Cutting back is much easier said than done.

And besides the political benefits, there are collateral economic benefits to military spending. Sure, the DoD budget is bloated, but some good most certainly does come out of it. Besides the stimulus created by spending on manufacturing equpiment, defense research creates a lot of new technologies that go on to have huge ripple effects in the private sector. Check out the history of DARPA (NASA too for that matter) and see how many of their projects gave birth to entire technologies we take for granted in the private sector today. It's staggering. We'd be living in a very different and less technologically developed world today without that research.

And of course there are geopolitical concerns about power projection, other than "Americans are afraid". The US was an isolationist nation prior to WWII, and Americans learned the following lesson probably better than anyone else: interventionism may create headaches, but it ultimately costs far less in blood and treasure than isolationism. Sometimes that interventionism goes badly (Iraq, Vietnam, etc.) and others gripe about American imperialism and bullying. Sometimes it does not go so badly. And some of it exists simply to protect US interests abroad, of which there are a great many. Military clout is also an economic advantage. I'm thinking in particular of the Navy; the importance of seapower upon the economic and military history of the world is hard to exaggerate.

And while it is easy to laugh at Seth's response (and I do as well), it ought to be said that more than a few US allies really are not carrying their weight. It is telling that Robert Gates, one of the better Defense Secretaries in US history, publicly ranted over the issue of defense cuts among NATO countries just before he retired, saying the alliance was now a two-tiered system. Most other NATO countries now spend well under the treaty-required 2% of the GDPs on their militaries. And the results show. Lo and behold, when the Libyan civil war erupted and some European countries decided they needed to to intervene, they were unable to organize anything prior to US agreement to assist them. And once the intervention began, they actually started running short on ammunition; the US, which had largely been in a back-seat logistics and intelligence role, stepped up its involvement because NATO was running out of steam. Against pitiful little Libya, right across the Med. Does anyone think there might be other crises which emerge in the next few years, ones which other nations besides the US might need to (or at least ought to!) become involved in? I'd venture a guess that something else might come up.

(Personal anecdote: in 2003 I was onboard the USS Iwo Jima in the Gulf of Oman when Liberia's civil was coming to a head. The UN was becoming desperate for someone to intervene. Various other west African countries had some peacekeepers but were unwilling to be the first the venture in. As for Europe, they literally didn't have anything available that could respond on short notice. So, my ship and its 2000 Marines went up the Suez, across the Med and down to Liberia at top speed in order to put an end to the civil war. We did, and Liberia has been progressing quite well since. But... why didn't anyone else do it when the UN asked? Not because political willpower was lacking so much as because military capabilities were so lacking.)

Also worth considering: the US only ranks 1st in the world in military spending in absolute terms. This should be predictable since the US also has by far the world's largest economy. But compared to the GDP of other nations, the US spend less on its military than 27 other nations. Yes, the US is in 28th place. And those DoD expenditures-compared-to-GDP are a fraction of what they were fifty years ago.

[Jason]

Right. It's also curious form of bootstrapping the economy as well. Also why domestic contractors usually get the contracts and why the US military is still using that horrible piece of shit - the M16 and its derivative the M4.

[SteveB]

No NSFW shirtless parody yet. We're a bit slow today.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Right. It's also curious form of bootstrapping the economy as well. Also why domestic contractors usually get the contracts and why the US military is still using that horrible piece of shit - the M16 and its derivative the M4.

I was going to mention the people who would be out of work if we suddenly stopped spending money on defense.

[Seabass]

Also worth considering: the US only ranks 1st in the world in military spending in absolute terms. This should be predictable since the US also has by far the world's largest economy. But compared to the GDP of other nations, the US spend less on its military than 27 other nations. Yes, the US is in 28th place. And those DoD expenditures-compared-to-GDP are a fraction of what they were fifty years ago.

But it's so much more dramatic to say the U.S. spends more than the next thirteen countries combined!

[Robert_S]

I'm not sure if the Internet was developed with military funds, but it had a military motivation: that if our scientists could communicate with each other more easily and have access to more data, then we'd have a technological advantage in the long run.