re: #278 freetoken

I’m offering it up as a phenomenon to be understood, without passing any immediate moral judgement upon it.

re: #276 palomino

It’s not possible to understand the post WWII expenditures on military by the US without looking at the role of the US worldwide. For many nations all over the world we have been an important partner in their own foreign policy and security, in many cases being the primary partner.

The US undertook, for various reasons, the role of policeman and defender.

Now, you might want to argue that we shouldn’t have done that, or that we can’t do it anymore. But, without a doubt our military expenditures are directly related to the roles we play internationally.

That all makes sense, as it clearly is America’s past over the last 60 years. But, just as we are forcing ourselves to acknowledge new global economic realities, we may want to re-think our military role as well, at least to the extent that modest cuts in military spending are on the table.

The reason we’ve been able to play world cop has been our overwhelming economic superiority. Now that much of the rest of the world has crawled out of first the ashes of WWII and then communist dictatorships and colonialism, we probably can’t maintain such vast superiority. Just being realistic.