No country in the world comes close to expending more money on its Defense spending than the United States of America. In fact, America’s military budget is approximately four times the amount that China spends on its military budget, though, because China’s labor rate is significantly lower, it signifies that China gets more bang for the buck. While it is true that America has the largest economy in the world, it has to be admitted that China’s economy has been relentlessly growing and is getting ever closer to matching America, though to actually get there will take several more years, but this event will surely happen, as China’s population is approximately four times that of the United States, and for a certainty, numbers matters.
A significant reason why America’s Defense budget dwarfs not just China’s Defense budget, but in actuality measures nearly 40% of all global military expenditures has got to do with America’s intent to be seen as a true global empire, and because the world is so big, and has so many troubling areas and potentially troubling areas, it thus necessitates a huge military budget, year after year. Yet, within all those monies spent, it doesn’t seem to permanently resolve anything, which has got to be seen as a huge disappointment, because despite America’s massive military power, it doesn’t equate to a world in which all is stable, and everything is quiescent. In fact, it could be argued that America’s vast Defense expenditures seem to necessitate America getting involved in just about every area that piques its interest, which actually makes for a less stable world, and therefore less peace and quiet.
When it comes to Defense spending, China prefers to keep it pretty basic, which is to focus on taking care of protecting and augmenting their regional power, and to not waste much time or energy trying to become a worldwide military powerhouse, which China believes does them no good. Rather, China likes to make investments in other nations and to trade with other nations, while also making it its point to not be bellicose in its attitude or in its actions with other nations. Perhaps, China, is trying to fool America, and in actuality is just biding its time before wreaking its own havoc, or perhaps it could be said, that’s the sensible way it desires to go about its business, because excessive military expenditures, not only takes away from where those monies could be better allocated, but also seems to encourage those that receive those military funds to look for trouble to thereby have to deal with such, to thus justify that military expenditure.
The bottom line really comes down to the fact that nations need to make a conscious choice of where they are going to invest and to expend their money, for no nation can do everything, but rather choices need to be made, and for the United States the choice clearly has been, that being the biggest and baddest military power in the world, second to none, makes sense for America, but it needs to be taken into full account, that if those calculations have been wrong, it has in its own way, weakened America, not strengthened her, and therein lies the rub.