I could be missing the point about military spending, and the five-year-old in my head asking the question does just want forcefields over every country in the end.
In: Technology
If your mom wants the chores done, does she beat you with a shoe immediately, or does she first threaten to beat you with a shoe?
This is called “force projection” because you are *projecting* the *force* of your military without actually using it. It’s exactly like the force-field you envision, except it has a button that lets the field be extended past your own borders and into someone else’s territory. This is useful if you want to make them not only stop attacking you but also do other things like stop attacking your friend who doesn’t have a force-field of his own.
Right now we don’t have “defensive” technology to stop a large scale attack (like force fields or whatever), so for the US, “defense” is really having a good offense.
I’m sure eventually there will be some kind of Wakanda style shield, but right now, the best bet is having offensive weapons (aircraft carriers or missile submarines) to project the ability to (counter)attack throughout the world.
The war department’s name was changed, specifically, because it is easier to palette ‘defense’ spending, something noble and virtuous, than ‘war’ spending, something that is ignoble and violent. This is despite them being the exact same thing. We do it all the time, think of the Korean “police action” (war), or the Vietnam WAR, or the Iraq WAR, all of them had or have some watered down but somehow better sounding title. Operation “Iraqi Freedom”, rather than “Iraq War” and the like.
You can refer to the book “Manufacturing Consent” which delves into topics of language as it relates to manipulating public discourse.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent)
Defense spending is mostly on people and weapons and logistical support that can be used offensively or defensively.
What things are “offensive” and “defensive” isn’t simple. On different levels or looked at different ways the same thing can be either. Many things are similar in effectiveness on offensive and defense.
You might consider fortifications defensive, but by themselves they don’t usually provide good defense (they slow down and maybe weaken the office or channel them in to specific areas, so more mobile forces can assist in the defense or counter attack.). And in any case fortification can be used in a strategically offensive way (you take some of your enemy’s territory, then you build fortifications and bases that protect your grab of territory and support further attacks).
Armor is physically defensive, but it allows for attack. Soldiers with weapons and armor often have had an advantage against soldiers without (particularly with weapons like swords, and spears, and bows). An armored tank is physically defended but that enables it to attack more, compare that to a machine gun or anti-tank gun (now usually replaced by ATGMs), or AAA gun or SAM battery, which physically don’t provide much protection if any and are almost pure attack in a direct physical sense, but are quite useful on the defense. Protective force fields don’t exist. If they did, they would presumably be used on ships and land vehicles to help attacks.
Considering the above what would PURE “defense spending” even mean, spending that allows you to defend but doesn’t enable attack?
In olden times, there was no “defense”. There were “ministries of war”, “war budgets” and so on. But after 1945, countries of the world decided that war is Very Bad. So everyone switched to the politically correct synonym “defense”. It kinda sorta says “We do not want war, we really don’t, but if someone does, we’ll defend”.
It’s marketing. In the case of the US, the thing we call the “Department of Defense” was called the “Department of War” up until 1947. In Britain, the War Office became the Ministry of Defense in 1964.
Thing is, no matter what you call it, all military spending and action is supposed to do the same thing- change someone else’s behavior to achieve a political goal of your country’s. Basic [Clausewitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz)- war is the extension of politics by other means.
So if you have a stack of nuclear weapons sufficient to inform any country that invasion will be met with annihilation? It does what you wanted it to do- prevents them from invading. If you can park an aircraft carrier off someone’s coast and suggest they change their recent policy decisions? Job done.
Military violence isn’t done to kill people and break stuff, it’s done to persuade. There’s not a clear division between offense and defense when you look at it that way.
Because Defense Spending is actually “Defending the Empire we created through invasion of other nations” spending.
Stealing the natural resources of other countries tends to make those people hate you and therefore requires a LOT of money to prevent them from rising up and killing us.
If we simply stopped stealing their resources we could reduce our spending by 90% and STILL be the largest spender in the world.
It’s called deterrence. A simple way of looking at it would be to look at nuclear arms. The US has nukes, Russia has nukes, Israel has nukes, China has nukes. If the US was to nuke Russia, then russia would nuke the US, because they too have nukes. The US does not like being nuked so thus the US will try it’s best to not have to utilise nukes against russia as both of them know it’s a zero sum game. If the US did not have nukes, or russia, then there wouldn’t be a deterrence for the opposite side to not do something. The same way of looking at it can be applied to other aspects of military.
Operating in a siege mentality is ultimately self defeating, being able to take the fight to your enemy transitioning to offense is how you win.
It doesn’t get talked about in the same terms, but Foreign Aid budgets are at least to some extent a form of defensive spending. No one wants to attack you if you’re helping to keep their bellies full.
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