The amount of monies allocated to the Department of Defense in America is an incredible amount of money, and since there is a limited amount of resources that America can budget and thereby spend its money upon, it has to be said, that more money spent on the defense of the nation, when seemingly excessive and imprudent, is money thereby taken away from the people that could be used for their good welfare, which basically means that despite the fact that America is the richest nation in the whole world, it still has a troubling amount of people that essentially suffer, because of their lack of proper food, shelter, and opportunity.
The primary reason why America expends so much money on its defense, besides its insistence on being the world’s policeman is the fact that it insists that America and therefore the entire western world and its allies are constantly under threat, of which the country that has played the bogeyman for decades is Russia, which at its peak as the Soviet Union was a nation that had both size and a GDP which was in and around 1970, considered to be the second largest GDP in the world, but of which, this GDP was approximately one-third of the United States. Still, it has to be said that the Soviet Union was one of the two premier nuclear powers, with therefore the capability to wreak destruction, though it never had close to the collective power of the United States and its allies, despite the insistence from these United States that it was a viable threat.
Indeed, the main reason why the Soviet Union, which subsequently became Russia, again, and thereby no longer had a union of sister states in and around Russia was considered to be such a threat to America, was to provide the military-industrial-technology complex the raison d'être of why billions upon billions needed to be spent on the defense of this nation, even though, those at the highest echelons of power knew that the Soviet Union was not really a threat to the United States or its way of conducting business, but rather served their purpose to justify all the expenditures directed its way that enriched certain aspects of this nation at the overall expense of the people.
Presently, with Russia’s GDP being about equal to Italy’s GDP, this is proof positive that to continue to believe that Russia is that big, bad wolf is ill-considered, but fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon one’s viewpoint, Russia is being replaced as the big, bad wolf with China, which certainly makes more sense, because not only is China the world’s second largest economy, but its population is well over 1 billion people, in addition to the fact that China is a nation that is becoming more of a global economic force, year by year.
Yet, what isn’t mentioned nearly enough when it comes to China, is that China does not behave like a bellicose nation, and further to the point, seems content to concentrate its energies on improving the lives of its people as compared to desiring to engage America in a world war, thereby signifying that America need not continue to expend so much money on its defense, when it actually has no fair reason to believe that it is under threat by any other nation, whatsoever.