Secondly, America's defense is way more expensive than it needs to be due to a lot of high level corruption and lobbying from the military industrial complex profiteering when it comes to purchasing decisions, where a 10$ bag of bolts is bought by the military for 50K$, shovelings taxpayer money into the right private industry pockets. EU can achieve similar results with way less cost if it wanted to by minimizing this style of corruption but that's easier said than done. The only one rivaling America's military inefficiency is Germany who spends more than France, a nuclear power with aircraft carriers, but can't afford to issue underwear and dog tags to new conscripts.
Thirdly, America's lack of social services is not due to its powerful military, but due to political choices and inefficiencies. It could easily have better welfare if it wanted to since it can afford it with the world's largest GDP, but it chooses not to, since the current status quo is enriching a lot of private enterprises and parasites, while the concept of even more welfare is usually not a popular topic with the US voters which see welfare recipients as lazy and an unnecessary money sink funded by higher taxes on the middle class which they don't want. So their issue is social and political, not economical.
Would you consider most European countries to actually have an effective military deterrent?
By troop count, munitions stock, or the number if tanks and jets I don't see anyone as having a particularly impressive military in Europe. That doesn't mean they couldn't organize one if needed, but that's a different issue.
> Thirdly, America's lack of social services is not due to its powerful military, but due to political choices and inefficiencies.
You're missing a big factor here, cultural differences. America was built on the idea of people making a way for themselves and living or dying by their own successes or failures. We've moved pretty far away from that and do now have social programs and safety nets, smaller than many European countries' nets, but the expectation of making a way for yourself is still under the surface. Many people simply don't want the level of welfare programs seen in other countries.
compared to what? Who does Europe need to fight who has more ammo, tanks, jets and nukes? Russia has proven itself unable to take on Ukraine with half-assed support by the west, China and India are far away.
Shall Europe prepare to fight the US for Greenland?
I'd strongly recommend you not underestimate Russian ability by assuming Ukraine is the best they could do. That doesn't mean they are going to invade further into Europe, but we're talking about military size and deterrence here.
NATO-without-USA has more aircraft, tanks, and watercrafts than Russia. Less stored ammo for sure, and probably not as effective, but on the other hand: nukes.
It sure seems to me like NATO is largely built on the assumption of US involvement, but I could be biased there.
Sounds like we just have different expectations of how stretched the Russians are today, nothing wrong with especially as I'm assuming neither of us have access to the most meaningful field assessment reports.
My view on how the Russians have handled the war, since losing their chance at a quick sweep, has been that they are doing only enough to keep pressure and roughly maintain the front line gains they made. Sure that line has moved, and Ukraine did a pretty impressive job capturing some Russian territory which I don't think was expected by many, but the Russians seem to be balancing a lot more than just a single goal of victory.
I'm curious where you are getting reliable Intel on the Russians current stockpile of munitions, I haven't come across anything meaningful there publicly beyond potentially politically motivated statements and reporting regurgitating those same claims.
Edit: its worth noting there are other reason the North Koreans may have sent troops. If the country is feels the military needs actual combat experience for whatever reason, for example, they could send troops regardless of whether it actually helps the Russian effort.
almost all their functional BMDs
~4/5ths of their functional BMPs
almost all of their MTLBs and MTLbus
~2/3rds of their big artillery
~1/3rd of their small artillery (because they are short on ammo)
all of their mortars
~4/5ths of their towed artillery (that isn't from WW2)
~9/10ths of their rocket artillery
Furthermore, these numbers have been cross correlated with visually confirmed loss data https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum..., .
Please. People want to be taken care of. America was built by people escaping famine and people escaping poor living/working conditions.
In other words, it was built by people trying to make a better living for themselves. Living or dying by your success or failure wasn't a desirable feature, it was an incidental side effect of colonizing a new land.
Ask a person if they would prefer to be taken care of when sick and of course the answer would be yes. It isn't that simple.
Welfare programs require taxes to fund them and larger government bureaucracy to manage them. Not everyone agrees with that, and not every government is actually trustworthy to manage the programs well.
The US has never gone through the stage of being "ready for war" and instead went for the "living from one war to the next"
The open seas is a myth. It is the American seas unless you have a lot of nuclear weapons.
> that come at a great cost to Americans in reduced social services like health insurance and higher education
But also brought lots of business and investment too. On total it's positive, otherwise the US would not do it. *I am not saying the distribution of the incoming wealth was equal.
I think that's not the case. you can make a case that Russia's "shadow fleet" is being treated with some bias, but then again...
Thanks for the laugh
I doubt the other budget line items would see an increase with defence cuts, but we certainly don't need the entire defence budget for just our own sake. America doesn't need 11 nuclear aircraft carriers or nearly 2500 F-35s, among other excesses.
Also: Attitudes like yours sincerely make me want to see America First pushed more literally to the point of leaving those who don't appreciate us to fend for themselves. Japan, EU, and so on.
Obama already declared we aren't the world police anymore, for better or worse.
It takes all nine of the top 10 countries besides America (#1) to finally match and exceed the American defence budget. Of those nine, only two (Germany and France) are EU members.
In a word, the American defence budget is fucking massive and we certainly don't need anywhere even remotely most of it for ourselves.
Edit: yes my bad, I was meaning this comment for another poster in the thread.
Seriously. You just more or less repeated what I've been saying, minus the potentially spiteful sentiment.
From my original comment:
>The reason the US defence budget is so sky-fucking-high is because we effectively pay for everyone's military, though.
Yes, but don't act like that is some kind of selfless act. In the end, it benefits the US more if they do that and have military bases and influence all over the place, than not doing that. If that also protects their allies, even better, since then it can be used to better justify the international meddling (as you're doing now).