With the rise of China and its exponential military spendings, do you think that decreasing us military budget would be a wise strategic move ?
The budget is essentially unchanged[1]. The value of that budget has increased exponentially because the value of Chinese currency has increased. China has not directed any more of its resources to its military.
Even more foolish is acting like the Chinese military is capable of threatening the US any time soon. Like fuck, at least we still kind of fight proxy wars with Russia; we do nothing of the kind with China. China is totally incapable of force projection outside tiny pacific islands. China is the only nuclear country that has a "no first use" policy on nukes. They have a single aircraft carrier, compared to the US' eleven. The US has as many carriers (which are the single dominant mode of force projection) as the rest of the world combined.
The US military is so absurdly oversized that we would benefit strategically by spending the money on R&D or the economy instead. Until such a time as the US expects to literally fight China, Russia, and the EU at the same time, the military is massively excessive.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_China#/medi...
When China's economy is another 50% larger, matching where US GDP is at today, you can expect China's real military spending to considerably exceed the US today.
Thanks to drastically lower salaries & benefits, the personnel costs for the Chinese military is a far smaller portion of its total military spending as compared to the US share.
Adjusted PPP comparison: https://i.imgur.com/SY22Whj.png
I'm surrounded by people who take our position in the world for granted and don't see any problem with gutting our military, though.
Europe endures and prospers without threat of violence or economic imperialism by bomb across the globe.
What's wrong with you people.
Personally, I'll settle for having it over not having it.
We have lived under the protection of the US Military for so long that most have forgotten what a world would be like without it. Eventually you begin to believe that if the military was simply gone things might still be the same, or perhaps even more peaceful.
But they’d be wrong. They simply have no idea what others will do for power.
And magically... they don't get attacked. Funny how that works...
[1] http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ (Skip to the 14 minute mark if you're impatient)
Interestingly, this convention is signed and ratified basically by the whole world, but not by the US.
[0] https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2019/04/russia-scor...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_t...
During WWII, do you think appeasement would have worked?
The reason many evil countries aren't bombing the US and Canada is because they know they would be obliterated by the US military due to past campaigns.
Protected from what? From the White Walkers?
Who is there to attack Canada (besides the US itself)? The Great Britain is trying to return the lost colony? France is thinking about taking over the Quebec?
To give you an couple examples in the current real world, imagine if South Korea or Taiwan didn't have such good relations with America in the post-WW2 peace. It is not that far fetched to think that there could be a single communist Korea, Taiwan could have been swallowed up by mainland China.
I don't think that Canada in your alternative universe would've been worse off than Finland in this one. Finland's neutrality kept it safe ever since the WW2.
When push comes to shove, neutral countries eventually need to pick sides or they will be taken over.
You cannot seriously assert that if Germany beats the UK and Russia, they will decide to simply leave Switzerland alone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum#Nazi_atti...
Want to scare the world and become known? Canada probably isn't the place to do so, the US is way bigger, has more news outlets, and enough targets that you can probably hit at least one of them.
Want to show the world how cruel you can be, and inspire revenge? Attack Canada out of the blue- the stereotype of Canadians being super chill and apologizing is international, and attacking them will get everyone and their dog angry at you.
Want to do a lot of damage? US.
Want to show that your country is capable of going toe-to-toe with a first-world country? The USA is your best bet.
As alluded to by other commenters, Canada is also protected because its physical barriers touch the United States', and anything major that affects Canada will also affect the US, too.
And magically... a lot of countries that aren't Canada still get attacked. Funny how that works.
Sanctioning China economically though is a moralistic move. It has real absolute costs to the US economy, and such sanctions would need the broad consensus support the Russian ones did - if you don't punish aggression unilaterally and in global unison then the aggressor still has inroads into the global economy to ease any impact.
It is never a solution to spend several hundred billion more dollars on weapons of war that are wholly irrelevant to any legitimate threat of conflict with any other nuclear power. They only serve as a dick measuring contest of how much of your economic productivity you can wholly waste before your economy collapses. That is pretty much exactly how the Soviets fell, and the US is too egocentric to realize its going down that road too.
Nope, just regrettable but necessary reaction to the NATO expansion. Your words, however, perfectly describe the American illegal adventures in Iraq in 2003.
"to try undermining US elections"
If that is what you say Russia was doing, what would you call the American meddling in Russian elections? [0]
[0] 'Yanks to the rescue. The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win.' http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html
I am not an expert, but my feeling is that overwhelming military power is not the only thing that contributes to the survival of an empire (which the US de facto is).
In any case, the crux of the US-China competition is that the US has a presumption of global primacy, and feels that it cannot even allow a regional power like China to establish itself. All of the problems in the relationship do not disappear if you drop that presumption, but many of them do - and certainly the idea that we should prepare for World War Three does, which in any event, would almost certainly lead to a global nuclear holocaust.
Also, US Presidents have not been 'prevented' from drawing back from the world stage by 'external events'. Events happened, and they responded as such. There was nothing foreordained or deterministic about it. They could have chosen differently.