War and Peace
Some interesting facts that made me stop and go, "wow".
The world's GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, a measure of how much the economy produces, is about $60 trillion. The United States GDP is about $12 trillion, which about 20% of the world's GDP, vastly more than anyother nation.
The world this year is spending s little more than $1 trillion on military expenditures. The United States budget for military expenditures is about $563 billion. Add on top of that about $100 billion unbudgeted expense for Iraq and Afghanistan. That means that the United States accounts for about 50-60% of all military expenditures in the world, about 6 times the expenditures of the next leading country, China. The next top 5 are Japan, France, and the UK, which each spend approximately the same amounts, which is a few billion less than China.
This makes me wonder: Who are we preparing to fight?
posted by Macbeth54 @ 2:08 PM
3 Comments:
What's funny is that history has shown an underfunded underdog army with a cause is much stronger than an apathetic army with guns.
What I mean is that a few Iraqi patriots can keep America's military might busy. Hannibal can march right up to Rome. What was that place in SouthEast Asia? Oh yeah, Vietnam. They beat the French. Then they beat everyone else. Japan was the only nation not conquered by Genghis Khan. The Gauls kept Caesar busy long enough that we refer to that conflict as "wars" plural.
All I'm saying is money doesn't buy victory if your army is an army of mercenaries. Your soldiers have to believe in the cause or you're going to lose and it's going to look bad. ... everyone roots for the underdog anyway.
Extraterrestrial beings.
duh...
everyone knows that when earth is called upon to face off with aliens or meteors or asteroids or microbiological dirtbags the US is expected to do all the dirty work.
Galen, I must repectfully disagree with you. The reason we are kept "busy" with a few iraqi patriots is because we don't want to lay to waste the entire country, which, with our money, we could easily do. Same in Vietnam. If we were fighting to actually defeat not conquer, they wouldn't stand a chance. The problem comes when we don't want everyone dead.
So, money can buy victory, depending on what victory you want. Remember, we over-threw the government there in a few weeks, and could have easily have done the same in '91, so our money is obviously doing something for our military might.
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