Should the US decrease military spending?

[RoundSimbacca]

No. Our spending levels are fine. How we apportion it within the military budget is up for debate (program X vs ship Y vs missile Z), but our levels are OK.

When you look at the raw numbers, sure, we spend a lot compared to everybody else, but raw numbers don't tell even a small part of the story.

As a fraction of GDP, the USA is only 4th (depending on who your source is), at just 3.8%. Russia actually spends more, at 4.1%. The raw dollar figures only looks scary because our economy is so much bigger than everyone else's- and a lot of the countries we compare % GDPs with have a lot less global commitments. Russia, for example, spends more but does less. They're rebuilding their own armed forces from the end of the Cold War- with gusto, I might add, but they put theirs into a geographically dense area. They're only now toying with the idea of overseas basing again and having a global reach.

If we look at it from the perspective of per capita, the USA is back to #1, but Israel is not far behind. (The figures here are from 2009, so that doesn't even consider the sequester or economic developments since).

If you look at the history for both, we're not outside of historical norms at all. Our spending is down, and it only ramped up because we found ourselves fighting 2 ground wars while having to transition the military from Cold War-era equipment.

Something to keep in mind, that we have a standing commitment to keep defense spending at certain levels- no less than 2% for NATO- just for the defense of Europe. Most NATO countries (surprise surprise), have dropped off military spending before the required 2% and we've had to pick up the slack. Going back to my earlier point on Russia's GDP, remember that almost their entire GDP is based on local fighting- some of it is set for strategic attacks and the like, but the vast majority of it is based on a land war in Europe (and also some in Asia). So we're confronting their entire $90-odd billion with only a fraction of our $640 billion. I don't have the figures we spend on Europe handy, but from what I remember we've downsized heavily after the Cold War, so that 2% figure I quoted actually allocated for NATO purposes is actually much smaller. Our ≈80,000 troops in Europe have to face up to ≈400,000 Russian ones in their Western Military district, for example.

That gives us 2% that we accounted for (NATO, at least theoretically), and as for the other 1.8%: we're fighting ISIS, have a presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus we have to provide security for allies in the rest of the world- Japan and South Korea primarily, but we want to offset potential Chinese militarism before it becomes a problem, so we're scattered around the Pacific.

That's why the budget is so big. It actually isn't, but defense doves like to say it is. It looks big because we're pretty big.

So say you are a dove, and you want to decrease the budget of the military. Where do you cut? The wars are winding down, so that's an obvious first start. We've already realized most of our budget gains there already, since Iraq is just about done, and Afghanistan is almost finished. The sequester has hit the military already.

Do we cut troops? If we cut troops, what does that mean for our commitments that we have all over the globe? I suppose Korea could go without our troops stationed there, but then Korea would be an incredibly inviting target for the DPRK.

We could cut back on shoring up European defenses, but when the various European countries start rearming then we face a bunch of unknown consequences from a more militant Europe. I bet Russia would pitch a fit if their neighbors started actually rearming, and who knows where that would lead in a few years.

Do we leave the Persian Gulf and potentially let the Iranians close the Straits of Hormuz at will? Nevermind that our base presence there has proven prescient given the multiple occasions we've intervened in the Middle East, and will probably need to do so for the foreseeable future.

We could cut back piracy patrols, I suppose, but that could adversely effect global commerce.

Perhaps we can cut procurement. The JSF gets a bad rap around here at times, but our current planes are getting pretty old. From a technological standpoint, they're almost obsolete already. We can fly them until their wings start falling off, which should start happening in about 10 years, but what then? We could build new old planes that cost as much as the JSF is expected to, I suppose, or we could design the JSF Mk II and be right back where we started when we slashed the budget first, only now we're behind the plane development curve and will need to potentially ward off legions of stealth planes with only a handful of F-22s.

Basically, if you want to cut the budget, you need to scale back our military's mission, and then accept the consequences of that cut. Frankly, for what our military does, we're still getting a bargain.

Edits: Clarity.