In the 1960s, defense spending accounted for over 12% of GDP. Today it's between 3-4%. We're not still fighting the cold war, and our defense spending has been reduced by a factor of 3 to 4. It's not very far off from other countries. The UK's is around 2.2% to 2.5%. Russia's is over 4% since the Ukrainian conflict.
The US GDP is orders of magnitude bigger than the other countries, and also has no land borders to defend so it's "defense" spending should really not be as big as most other countries.
Of course "defense" is a joke here, because US Military Defense spending is mostly "Offense" - power projection. Patrolling the international waters, and flying air missions to ensure the entire world knows the US is in charge.
Whether this has value in the world today is subjective. It's a pretty deep divide between the left ("why can't we all just get along?") and the right ("i'm afraid of anyone with a shade of skin darker than a mango, so i want an F16 flying around their country's borders 24-7 and an aircraft carrier parked outside their front door")
It didn't make much sense for most of the 90's, once russia collapsed.
It didn't make sense post 9/11 where the enemy was no longer a state, and too ephemeral to be affected by aircraft carriers.
It doesn't make sense post 2016 because the war Russia is waging on the US is one with Information (fake news, Facebook), and by compromising one of the two major political parties.
Hilariously, like a broken clock, the US is about to be right again, because it WILL make sense again over the next decade as China enters it's own "World Police" ambitions.
And as evil and self-centered the US government and international policy is, I'd rather have them in charge than China (Because while they are bastards, they are my bastards, and I, as a westerner, reap the benefits of their policies).
> It didn't make much sense for most of the 90's, once russia collapsed
You're right. Which is why we went from spending 12.5% of our GDP on defense to less than 4% after the end of th cold war. That's literally a 3-4x reduction.
>It doesn't make sense post 2016 because the war Russia is waging on the US is one with Information (fake news, Facebook)
And what do you think their endgame is with this information war?
They aren't pumping out the disinformation for shits and giggles, it's for a very clear distinct foreign policy reason when you consider Georgia, Ukraine, etc
without taking into account the changes in purchasing power/inflation, actual budget amount, and changes in GDP, those stats are not really comparing apples to apples.
Quite the opposite, almost all experts use percentage of GDP as a measure of how much a country is developing its military. Purchasing power and inflation means that $100 billion today is totally different than $100 billion 20 years before or later. Not to mention, the total inflation adjusted amount of wealth in the country has gone up considerably, so even increases in inflation adjusted spending could still mean that the country is dedicating less of it's overall economic output to the military. Percentage of GDP is a much more effective measurement.
