You pay American soldiers and contractor salaries. You buy weapons and technology from American companies.
Bribes don't have the same economic effect.
For these large dollar amounts, how you spend it matters as much as how much you spend.
While there are wealthy individuals who profit from the military-industrial complex, it's hard to shake the impression that the majority of our bloated military budget is a federal make-work jobs program (with deaths of American troops and foreign civilians as a negative externality).
The majority of it is precisely that. It's the only jobs & wealth redistribution program Republicans are willing to fund (though they never call it that). Pity it's so inefficient for that purpose.
Middle-class voters may not actively be lobbying for the perpetual [Military/Prison/etc]-Industrial Complex; but the mere fact of who writes the checks for those voters' salaries and benefits makes the racket extremely difficult to unentrench, above and beyond the already problematic influence of the 0.001% who are shamelessly fleecing the taxpayer. It's a truly wicked problem.
If the choice is between immeasurable human suffering, domestic corruption and jobs or just solving the problem, the war racket wins. Removing the profit motive is the key suggestion in the War is a Racket.
Whenever talking about an economic issue people have to stop thinking in terms of money and start thinking in terms of goods and services made.
The point of an economy is not to circulate money for kicks and giggles. Money is just to facilitate exchange of goods and services.
A working economy creates a large number of goods and services which the inhabitants wants and needs. You pay a worker to build a car and he makes something people benefit from. You pay a worker to make a missile and he makes something which does not improve the lives of anything. It is a complete waste of time and effort.
There is ample evidence of defense contractor stock values appreciating, including a network of contractors that are hard to fully track, so not always assured they are US based, and same for the investors in those companies.
Ex. Mercenaries from other countries, airplane wiring from India, etc.
During peace-time, I think there's a lot to be said about the ROI for the military, if the military is at some reasonable scale (which I think it is not).
With regards to the many Middle East (ME) wars, I think a lot of that is about maintaining and enforcing the petro-dollar. If the ME decides to start selling their oil in Euros or gold or some other currency, it will mean the end of the USA as we know it. The dollar will collapse and China or Russia will take over as the world hegemon. Many people really have a distaste for US hegemony, but unfortunately the real options on the table are not US vs nobody. It's US vs probably China. So the ROI is much more complicated in that regard.
IMO there is no reason we should be killing people outside our borders or even have military outside our borders when there are much larger domestic problems that are unaddressed. I walk by homeless people shooting up right next to million+ dollar houses (yay Seattle + AMZN/MSFT) every day and fixing this shoes not seem to be the priority as the defense contractors and American people themselves are from this porkbarrel.
Yes, war is a racket.
What is your hypothesis on what happens across the globe in the absence of US hegemony and crazy wars. Do you believe a loss of the petro-dollar would lead to US collapse? Do you believe Chinese hegemony would happen, and if so, would it be better or worse than US hegemony?