Interesting perspective, but let me throw out this perspective from Sun Tzu:
The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.
Part of why we invest in defense is to ensure we never have to fight. True war is costly, by definition.
It should be used as a last resort, when no other tool is available. Conversely, if you do have to deploy it, you want to be sure that it “changes the equation”. In other words, If it didn’t truly hurt/disable you or your opponent at the end if it, then there was no reason to do it in the first place.
How does this relate to current US defense posture? In short: we want to make it such that no one wants to have a real fight with us, that instead they prefer discussions/diplomacy (at least at the nation state level).
While folks complain about how much we spend in defense, a lot of it is not for the result per se (though ensuring cutting edge capability is important), but more to make the point that we are spending X times a given country A. This is intended to make country A less interested in being a bad actor to the US.
Is this perfect? Probably not. Is there lots of waste? Certainly. But overall it has generally worked, and as such underlies much of why the US does what it does with military spending.
The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.
Part of why we invest in defense is to ensure we never have to fight. True war is costly, by definition.
It should be used as a last resort, when no other tool is available. Conversely, if you do have to deploy it, you want to be sure that it “changes the equation”. In other words, If it didn’t truly hurt/disable you or your opponent at the end if it, then there was no reason to do it in the first place.
How does this relate to current US defense posture? In short: we want to make it such that no one wants to have a real fight with us, that instead they prefer discussions/diplomacy (at least at the nation state level).
While folks complain about how much we spend in defense, a lot of it is not for the result per se (though ensuring cutting edge capability is important), but more to make the point that we are spending X times a given country A. This is intended to make country A less interested in being a bad actor to the US.
Is this perfect? Probably not. Is there lots of waste? Certainly. But overall it has generally worked, and as such underlies much of why the US does what it does with military spending.