Regardless we should be preparing to contest an efficient China and if it turns out they aren't spending wisely that's even better. But never count on the enemies incompetence.
As a serious question, why would you want anyone in the world to have a larger or more powerful military than yours?
No no it doesen't states barely have a military the National Guard is in a weird place. But the military is a federal thing because soldiers are loyal to the nation not their state. State funding is not relavent anymore than city government funding.
And they can be easily taken care of by one nation with a competent navy.
Maybe that's because we go in there and do our own raiding. Isolationists want to avoid contact with those people so they can't raid us, YOUR position is the one that leads to war.
It worked in world war 2 where before we had a small army but in the war we ramped up. I want us to be cautious and not jump into wars because Vietnam, Iraq, all the others they were not about protecting American freedoms so there is no reason to give support to them.
One trillion my god. No we don't need or want that, an empire is useless to us.
Do you think that the majority of our spending goes to the soldier's salaries? LOL no it's because of what we spend on our air force and navy and their advanced technology. The Army and Marines aren't that pricy.
Why do we need to fight them all at the same time? Why should we do that? If our allies are so useless then maybe we should drop them and let Russia take Europe.
LOL Double. Why do we need to touch desert barbarians on another continent? Not all of us have a hate boner for brown Muslims like Neocons you know.
You just want to start wars Zach. That's why we want to take your toys away. Literally almost every war we have been in has not been necessary, it did not protect American lives or freedom. It's just empire building and the common man gains very little from the American empire.
Exactly.
The common main gains freedom of navigation on tje open waters thanks to America.
taxfoundation.org
No they cannot. It would take a massive competent navy to actually take care of them easily.
LMAO no you don't do raiding at all. If western countries were doing raiding, it would be something straight out of Warhammer, with nothing of value or alive being left after the raiding is over.
Small army, yes. Also world class navy and nice tech in air force.
No, that's just to not be fucked with. For an empire, multiply by 2-4 times further.
Do you think all the companies making military equipment can make their stuff at Chinese sweatshop costs? Of course not, and that has an effect on how much US military has to pay for those technologies.
It's not your choice when it is needed to fight them, it takes only one side to decide when a conflict goes hot.
I don't know about you, but i think a lot of Americans enjoy the economic benefits of world trade quite a bit, even if most of them do not understand completely how exactly that goes and how disruptions in shipping or energy supply can really throw a wrench into that.
Size and money spent doesn’t make a good military. You can spend all the money and have a massive army…but if the money just goes into developmental black holes that never produce anything of value or gets stolen? If the army is not well trained and have the right equipment? What good does it do?
I'm as anti-corruption as the next conservative, but from a performance perspective, that's a matter of also pushing for efficiency, not about spending less.
Ok this is a good reason. But do we really need 12 supercarriers to get that? I think we can have between 1 and 3 and we rely on local partners to gurantee the security of their local areas only step in if there is a big problem they can't. After all the British, Italians, Spanish, and Japanese have carriers also. Let's rely on them to pick up some slack.
Why should I care about those countries? I am not Ukrainian or Jewish let them stand or fall on their own merits.
They can't bully everyone either way, again we should only protect SOME nations our partners like Japan for instance. Not pick a fight with other big nations. Let them have their empires as long as they don't mess with us or our long term allies it's not our problem.
A question for you at this point why should we care if we lose a war with China or Russia? Neocons used this argument against the Islamist terrorist in the middle east. If we don't fight over there they will come here and impose Sharia law. But from what we've seen the terrorists won in Afghanistan our Army ran away and let our puppet collapse. Yet I'm not under Sharia law. So if we did fight a war against Russia in Ukraine and Russia beat us how would that affect us as long as it did not go nuclear? Same with China over Taiwan. We won't face negative consequences for our failure unless neocons go crazy and try to make a nuclear war.
No it's not again states provinces and cities are not important because it is the nation who spends on the military. Because the military is loyal to the nation the province can't send armies out to fight someone without the consent of the national government.
Not if we were brutal enough to bomb any large concentrations of people within a few miles of shore. The reason we have all these rules of war is because we can afford to. If we were not rich enough to afford guided bombs we'd use mass dumb bombs.
No that's an empire you want to project power far from the nations borders. To protect your OWN LANDS thats much less.
Again no nation can come land troops on American territory.
Funny but it's actually the "conservative" neocons who do stuff that pisses off the Muslims and leads to us having to pay higher gas prices. If we weren't fighting for democracy or Israel and just made deals with Arab strogmen, kings, leaders etc. then we could get much cheaper prices.
The feds do provide funding though, also the guard obeys the federal government at the end of the day.
12 super carriers allows for them to be on rotation so the crews get to have some rnr.
because they prove that the mkney we spend is more then worth it on our tech.
letting them have thier empires makes us weaker and lets them have mor eleverage over us. They get more respurces and everytbing out if it.
Because with Russia they are a threat to actual partners we have signed treaties woth, and the fact it would basically allow us to bring about the destruction of the authoritarian Russian government.
They get funding to provide training and equipment.
Yes I understand vehicles can't be out there 24/7 and they have to be brought back to port for repairs and refits. But again why do we need to have 24/7 coverage. That's too much you want us to be the world's policeman.
It also let's others see the specs of our tech. You can argue it would be better to keep them guessing.
Isn't this putting the cart before the horse? You are claiming they are enemies and saying we have to stop their empire building. But who decides what an enemy is? Many don't seem to have a problem with our "allies" empire building, to be honest weakening the British Empire sounds better since the British could actually be a threat to us with Canada at our north.
So with Russia I was asking what would be the consequence of them defeating us in war. And are you saying that if we lose and fail to protect Ukraine they won't be our allies? That makes them sound like not good allies and maybe we should dump them.
No you don't understand at the end of the day the National Guard obey the federal government. I'll give you an eample. You are in the Federal Army and the President orders you to launch an attack on another nation you will obey that right? It doesen't matter if it's an Arab shithole, China, Russia, hell even if it was a former ally like the UK or France. If it was a legal order you'd follow it right?
For military, yes, but for social spending they are very relevant.
Yes, and you need an actually massive navy to bomb so many big targets.
To protect your maritime trade routes, you need to have this power projection, or have allies who do. Or you can say fuck international trade and be a third world country, after all even leftists would love that regardless, for different reasons.
But several can make you wish they landed troops for you to shoot at.
History knowledge check. What was the conservative neocon stuff that pissed off the Muslims so much that it made the USA first found its Navy and then send it to the coasts of aloha snackbar lands to fight Muslims on the sea and burn their ports?
You can't look at non national spending because states and provinces don't NEED a military like a nation does, again only shitholes let one part of their country go to war with another. But another nation can attack you.
I don't think you'd need that much if you were willing to kill hundreds and thousands to make a warning.
Pirates are not a very big threat, and many nations can work together to combat it instead of wanting big daddy America to take care of everything.
Like?
The Barbary states of course only Muslims were the nations that engaged in piracy and slavery. Surely such actions are not common in history.
That and the very public inventories of Guard Armories are often several weaponry generations behind the actual military. I've seen Korean War era relics in the Alaskan Guard depots and that's because they were selling them to make room for the shiny new equipment your Federal government approved the purchasing for.
You think that warning will stop a bunch of islamist zealots? You will have to actually kill enough of them to reconsider, and you will need many, many tons of explosives delivered to achieve that.
Have you read the news? Several nations plus big daddy America are taking care of this one, and it's still kinda lackluster due to lack of political will.
Any nuclear power, and major naval powers even if they are not nuclear.
Other nations stopped, they didn't unless they were made to by western colonial powers.The Barbary states of course only Muslims were the nations that engaged in piracy and slavery. Surely such actions are not common in history.
You are the one who is literally changing the topic. Do you want to talk about modern day Islamists or the Barbary states?
The topic? You mean China? Oh, right.
Why is religion/culture/ethnicity/nationality/politics based slavery less bad than race based slavery? It's all slavery in the end.
The thread is about China yes. But our conversation link was transferred from some other thread, and I forgot which one.
And the reason why enslaving/oppressing others on religion, culture, or politics is less bad than race. Is because race is unchangeable. You Marduk are a Polish man ethnically nothing you do can change this, you can't turn yourself black or Chinese. However you can convert to Christianity, or Islam, or communism, or Fascism, etc. Those are things you can change you can join the empire and be part of society. That's why Hitler's crimes are worse than previous crimes. He killed Jews and Slavs and thats not something you can stop being(ethnically) Killing someone for being Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim is different because people can and have changed those unlike their skin color.