Eli5: Why is it that whenever we hear about “defense spending” it’s always on offensive things like weapons? Is there not a way to make actual defense the priority instead of offense?

Question

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

Answer 1

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.