Rather Than NATO Allies Increasing Spending Why Doesn't US Decrease Spending to Their Levels?
by John Lawrence, July 26, 2018
President Trump is upset about the disparity between European defense spending and American defense spending. He says NATO allies are getting a free ride. He wants them to increase defense spending to US levels. Here's an idea. Why doesn't the US with its bloated oversize defense budget decrease spending to their levels? The US defense spending, when you add in intelligence spending, spending on nuclear bombs (that's the Energy Department) and Homeland Security is over a trillion dollars. The US spends more on defense than the seven next highest spending countries combined. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2015 US defense spending outstripped that of China, Russia, UK, France, Japan, Saudi Arabia and India combined. In 2018 it's even worse.
So why don't the European countries push back towards the US and demand that the US decrease its defense spending? I guess they really don't care that US citizens go without adequate food, shelter and infrastructure as long as their ox isn't being gored. They like the US being the world's policeman and making a big show about talking tough with Russia. Of course when it comes to practical matters, Germany is happy to partner with Russia on the Nord II pipeline which will bring Russian natural gas to Germany at a reasonable rate. Such hypocrisy! And needless waste of defense dollars.
Wouldn't it be better to bring Russia into the fold rather than continuing to make them the outsiders? Of course when you need something from them that's mutually beneficial, then they aren't the enemy any more. The fact is that if the US ceased to be the world's policeman and sanctions imposer, the US economy would collapse. It's based on financial engineering and military spending. Other than that it has shipped off its manufacturing base to countries where the labor input is cheaper. The US is the world's largest debtor nation so it has to keep all those creditor nations in line. Else they might come calling and demanding their money.
The US is so poor and in debt that it can't even keep up with a $4 trillion infrastructure deficit. It is borrowing money just to pay interest on the national debt! Meanwhile, China is building infrastructure not only in China but around the world with its Belt and Road initiative. They have figured out the correct way to use fiat money. The US uses fiat money only to bail out the big banks, not to help Joe Six Pack. His mortgage can go up in flames for all the Federal Reserve, the nation's privately owned central bank, cares. In China the central bank is publicly owned. Maybe that's the difference.
