21–30 of 36 posts
There is no way China is only spending $85 billion. They've been fudging numbers on military expenditures for years. ...apparently if we look the other way, it'll go away.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't Europe helping out the US in Afghanistan ? Can you cite a source stating that US is defending Europe ?
> Isn't Europe helping out the US in Afghanistan? Yes, but that doesn't tell us which way the net benefits are going, it just says that Europe isn't completely dead-weight. > Can you cite a source stating that US is defending Europe ? Defending Europe is NATO's reason for existence.
The simple truth is most of the US military spending is domestic in nature. Historicly military benifits (heathcare, education etc.) vastly outweigh spending on classical peacekeeping missions. Toss in R&D which has little to do with defending our allies and the numbers just get silly. "As of 28 February, 2009 1,454,515 people are on active duty[12] in the military with an additional 848,000 people in the seven reserve components." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_armed_forces) compare that to the numbers from 10 years ago and you will notice that the armed forces have grown little to fight 2 wars at the same time.
PS: I am currently typing this from an Army machine. Which is limting what I am willing to say.
There is no way China is only spending $85 billion. They've been fudging numbers on military expenditures for years. ...apparently if we look the other way, it'll go away.
There is no way China is only spending $85 billion. They've been fudging numbers on military expenditures for years. ...apparently if we look the other way, it'll go away.
The US's dominant roll in NATO makes this graph misleading. For decades, Europe has essentially had a subsidized military through alliance with the US. They complain about increased US influence, but it's actually directly caused by who is defending whom.
For example, I don't have the figures, but I would assume that the USA spends an awful lot more on military R&D than the nations here in Europe, and subsequently is likely to see something of a return when we decide we need a new line of state-of-the-art fighter jets or similar. It doesn't look like the potential returns on the spending have been taken into account in the data, here, which somewhat obscures their significance.
The US's dominant roll in NATO makes this graph misleading. For decades, Europe has essentially had a subsidized military through alliance with the US. They complain about increased US influence, but it's actually directly caused by who is defending whom.
Isn't Europe helping out the US in Afghanistan ? Can you cite a source stating that US is defending Europe ?
Because of those bases, many of the European security problems of the past two centuries have disappeared. Britain no longer has to worry about a united Continent attacking them, as happened under Napoleon and the Nazis. Germany is no longer concerned about being a major power surrounded on all sides by potential enemies. And the entire continent is protected from expanding external powers, such as the USSR during the Cold War and the early Arab and Ottoman Empires.
OMG! My friendly little country, Norway, is being ranked as number 7.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Isn't Europe helping out the US in Afghanistan? Yes, but that doesn't tell us which way the net benefits are going, it just says that Europe isn't completely dead-weight. > Can you cite a source stating that US is defending Europe ? Defending Europe is NATO's reason for existence.
"NATO's mandate is to provide a common defence for the European and Atlantic areas." The simple truth is most of the US military spending is domestic in nature. Historicly military benifits (heathcare, education etc.) vastly outweigh spending on classical peacekeeping missions. Toss in R&D which has little to do with defending our allies and the numbers just get silly. "As of 28 February, 2009 1,454,515 people are on…
Does anyone seriously think that said Atlantic areas includes the US side of the Atlantic? (I do think that the Brits would help on the US side of the Atlantic.)
We can argue about whether the US military would be as large as it is without the NATO committment, but that doesn't change the fact that said committment is part of the reason for the size of the US military.
The fact that most US military spending is domestic doesn't imply that the US doesn't devote a significant amount of resources to NATO compared to the resources provided by other countries.
OMG! My friendly little country, Norway, is being ranked as number 7.