We already waste too much money in the United States trying to be the world police, and there's no good reason for it any more. We have too many of our own problems to deal with to waste so much money on that crap.
The entire "world police" concept is ridiculous and used to mask the true colonialist ambitions the US operates under. The reason this is a "problem" is that it might make China richer rather than the US.
The notion that the US military has been a force of good for the world needs to be abandoned. It serves only to encourage the US to attack more countries, as killing millions more Asians would be viewed as the more moral option than allowing Chinese influence to spread.
+1. We should make sure that our allies get access to our best technology and weapons platforms and obviously we can commit to defend them if they can commit to defending themselves (places like Germany need to step up to the plate) but America doesn't need to be the world's police man and can't afford to be the world's police man.
Ideally the US, EU and CN would work cooperatively rather than adversarially with regards to leading the world into a brighter future. The US and EU share s lot in terms of philosophy and economic goals. Japan and the “Asian tigers” also fit in. I think India to a great degree shares the same, but China currently is not in synchronicity with the EU-US-JP and to a lesser extent India’s goals on the world stage. We can quibble about climate change or tariffs, but we’ll agree on basic frameworks around trade, security, cooperation, and many other policies. We need a way to weave China into this (Russia too, but that’s another story) MFN status and WTO could have been leveraged, but that ship sailed a long time ago...
your priorities seem way off to me, I don't care if these countries disagree about trade but climate change needs everyone on board.
Also, we don't need China following the US regime change war machine.
With anti access area denial weapons like ballistic missiles and submarines, it is increasingly difficult to offensively project naval forces into a region. While this means America will have trouble navigating within China's vicinity, it also means that even relatively small countries like Vietnam and Taiwan can buy equipment to deter China.
>>
His push to project power abroad was accompanied by a power play at home. Xi has purged more than 100 generals accused of corruption or disloyalty, according to the official state-controlled media.
>>
For me this is a resounding signal the PLA is predominantly a domestic force. American Presidents do not sack Admirals that easily, because the American admirals are more powerful on the seas than domestic policy or DC.
I am not discounting the improvements in Chinese firepower, esp. their missiles targeting carriers. This article does not have anything substantial to say, China is a military Titan.
China may escalate certain issues to divert the attention of people especially if their economy has a hard landing. Its a risk, but we all know it.
Both "federal" and "discretionary" are weasel qualifiers that attempt to make military spending look artificially large. For one thing, defense is one of the relatively few things the federal government is supposed to be doing--you would expect defense to account for a disproportionately large fraction of "federal" expenditures. (And it makes for misleading comparisons to countries with unified governments, where military spending is reported as a percentage of all government spending.)
For another thing, many expenditures are mandatory rather than discretionary, for good reason. Peoples' social security checks shouldn't vary from year-to-year based on government finances. That doesn't mean that social security spending should be ignored when you're looking at the percentage of government spending that goes to the military.
Total government expenditures in the U.S. is $7.65 trillion. The military budget is less than 8% of that. We're on the higher side, but that's less than for example India or Singapore. As a percentage of GDP we're at 3.1%, which is again on the high side but not crazy out of line. France is at 2.3%, and the NATO target for Europe is 2%. In the early 1990s, France and UK were spending the same percentage of GDP as the U.S. is spending now (over 3%). I remember people talking about Seinfeld and Friends back then, but not about how the U.K. and France were crazy out-of-control with their military spending.
That's a rather misleading statement. Discretionary spending makes up less than a third of the federal budget. Defense spending works out to about 15% of federal spending overall. Confusion seems to arise because mandatory spending programs (like social security, medicare, medicaid, and the VA) are budgeted separately, as is the interest paid on federal government debt.
The United States spent $609 billion on defense last year. Surely it's possible to make the case for DOD cutbacks without misleading statistics.
Federal discretionary spending is a very specific type of spending. Overall, military budget has consumed a shrinking percentage of GDP overall. From around 11% in the 1950s to around 4% today: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/DoD-GDP-chart.png
I suspect it has to do with the comment(s). Also there are all of a handful of comments right now, if you're drawing conclusions already I'd say that is flawed from the start.
It's all too easy to declare votes are for whatever reason you want to think they are.
HN intentionally flags and removes controversial comments and posts, with the intention to prevent trolling, flame wars, and other detrimental behavior patterns. This is considered a feature, not a bug [0].
This ensures that HN provides a semi-curated discussion weighted towards technical and scientific issues, and against geopolitical or socioeconomic topics, for example.
That isn't a statement that these topics shouldn't be discussed, just that they aren't necessarily appropriate for discussion here.
I am not sure whether anyone being a military titan can be defined as "righteous", but its definitely been something that was going to happen sooner rather than later.
Of course. Our entire national psyche has been centered around American exceptionalism for at least 70 years. Scared isn't exactly right. We're very rival focused, I would say. It's China now but there was a time when it felt like Japan would control the electronics industry, for example.
There are many alternative hypotheses to your rather provocative and insulting one.
As China's prominence or output rise, it makes sense coverage would rise too.
It also makes sense that as China has more impact on the world, it will naturally affect the interests of a greater number of people. This in turn, means more people have a stake in something China is or isn't doing.
[+] [-] noobermin|6 years ago|reply
EDIT: I hope everyone realizes this is sarcastic. We already spend more than China and then some.
[+] [-] JimboOmega|6 years ago|reply
It won't with China, because China isn't playing the force projecting world superpower game like the SU was.
[+] [-] jayd16|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlarocco|6 years ago|reply
We already waste too much money in the United States trying to be the world police, and there's no good reason for it any more. We have too many of our own problems to deal with to waste so much money on that crap.
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|6 years ago|reply
The notion that the US military has been a force of good for the world needs to be abandoned. It serves only to encourage the US to attack more countries, as killing millions more Asians would be viewed as the more moral option than allowing Chinese influence to spread.
[+] [-] crowdpleaser|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AtlasLion|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Leary|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sremani|6 years ago|reply
For me this is a resounding signal the PLA is predominantly a domestic force. American Presidents do not sack Admirals that easily, because the American admirals are more powerful on the seas than domestic policy or DC.
I am not discounting the improvements in Chinese firepower, esp. their missiles targeting carriers. This article does not have anything substantial to say, China is a military Titan.
China may escalate certain issues to divert the attention of people especially if their economy has a hard landing. Its a risk, but we all know it.
[+] [-] olivermarks|6 years ago|reply
Translation: they need even more money.
[+] [-] rayiner|6 years ago|reply
For another thing, many expenditures are mandatory rather than discretionary, for good reason. Peoples' social security checks shouldn't vary from year-to-year based on government finances. That doesn't mean that social security spending should be ignored when you're looking at the percentage of government spending that goes to the military.
Total government expenditures in the U.S. is $7.65 trillion. The military budget is less than 8% of that. We're on the higher side, but that's less than for example India or Singapore. As a percentage of GDP we're at 3.1%, which is again on the high side but not crazy out of line. France is at 2.3%, and the NATO target for Europe is 2%. In the early 1990s, France and UK were spending the same percentage of GDP as the U.S. is spending now (over 3%). I remember people talking about Seinfeld and Friends back then, but not about how the U.K. and France were crazy out-of-control with their military spending.
[+] [-] gingerbread-man|6 years ago|reply
The United States spent $609 billion on defense last year. Surely it's possible to make the case for DOD cutbacks without misleading statistics.
[+] [-] manfredo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onepointsixC|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatfrenchguy|6 years ago|reply
Seriously this bad naming needs to stop.
[+] [-] mrb|6 years ago|reply
Meta comment: wonder if my comment will get downvoted too when it's just asking a question meant to start an intelligent discussion.
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
It's all too easy to declare votes are for whatever reason you want to think they are.
[+] [-] gervase|6 years ago|reply
This ensures that HN provides a semi-curated discussion weighted towards technical and scientific issues, and against geopolitical or socioeconomic topics, for example.
That isn't a statement that these topics shouldn't be discussed, just that they aren't necessarily appropriate for discussion here.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] Radzell|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] _mdlf|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkjshfajskdfa|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] deepVoid|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Hillsborough|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DavidHm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] devoply|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] NTDF9|6 years ago|reply
Is America really so scared of being number 2?
[+] [-] jayd16|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elefanten|6 years ago|reply
As China's prominence or output rise, it makes sense coverage would rise too.
It also makes sense that as China has more impact on the world, it will naturally affect the interests of a greater number of people. This in turn, means more people have a stake in something China is or isn't doing.
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
All of them would be.