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I don't blame them, some of the stats in this article are astounding. "The US is militarily involved in 76 countries."* "The U.S. spends more on arms and armi

by Hasz 8y ago

I don't blame them, some of the stats in this article are astounding. "The US is militarily involved in 76 countries."* "The U.S. spends more on arms and armies than the next seven biggest spenders combined" "U.S. and allied airstrikes in Syria and Iraq killed 6,000 civilians" *7 countries with drone strikes, 15 countries with combat troops (?!), 44 with military bases, and 58 with with counterterroism training programs, 2015-2017

partycoder 8y ago
The US also spends more than any country in healthcare. But most of that money only pays for administrative overhead like insurance companies, doctors filling endless paperwork to avoid being sued, or overpriced medication. It does not result in patients being healthier. Similarly, measuring the performance of a logistics company by gallons of gas consumed would be pretty dumb right? People would just drive in circles to consume more gas. Spending is about input, not output.
- yayana 8y ago
  > Spending is about input, not output. Spending is the measure of intention. The US intends to be the world's healthiest war cult.
  - dba7dba 8y ago
    What's really interesting is that in 1930's, US had one of the smallest army/armed forces of developed nations. In 1939, which was three months before England declared war on Germany, US Army had about 180,000 men, ranked 19th in the world and smaller than Portugal’s". Had there been no birth of communism and Nazism and Japanese militarism, it might have stayed that way. But those did come about, Britain's dominance (also France) of the globe was to be replaced, which turned out to be US and not communism/Nazism/other-ism. And I am personally mightily thankful for that.
    - village-idiot 8y ago
      We also didn’t have any neighbors that were anywhere close to our power. If the US/Mexico relationship was anywhere as fraught as say, Prussia/France, we would’ve had a much larger army back in the 1930s.
      - dba7dba 8y ago
        Totally agree. US had no need for a big army, but saw the need for a bigger navy to protect sea lane approaches to US Continent, and thus had a fairly sizable Navy. But in modern day with big jets, fast transports, such stance of not having army big enough seems not wise.
        partycoder 8y ago
        The US required a large, competent army from the very beginning: to gain its independence from Great Britain and to stay united after secession attempts.
        village-idiot 8y ago
        That's .... really not correct. Let's start with the revolutionary wars. About 200,000 Americans picked up arms during the revolutionary war, which is a lot! Especially next to the 121,000 troops the British had in 1781. Except that 200,000 is wartime total, while the 121,000 figure is all at once in 1781. The average number of men under arms that the Americans had was about 40,000, roughly on par with the 48,000 committed by the British in the colonies. Keep in mind that this was a demobilized and underfunded British army, with the British coffers being empty after the 7 years war. There are a series of battles on the continent that would see more men committed to a single battle than the Americans had under arms at once during the revolutionary wars. The Prussians (Germans to you and I) committed 20,000 to the Battle of Mollwitz in 1741, and 36,000 to the Battle of Hochkirch in 1758. The Austrians committed 80,000 to that exact same battle, twice the number of Americans under arms twenty years later. By 1776 Frederick the Great would have 187,000 men under arms during the peace. There is a very good reason why the founding fathers wanted to remain aloof from continental interests. The US Civil War is the bloodiest war that we've participated in, because every casualty was by necessity an American. It was a much larger conflict compared to the revolutionary war, but it doesn't really stand out as conflict containing large armies, compared to other European conflicts before and after. 2,200,000 Americans fought on the Union and 750,000-1,000,000 Americans fought for the Confederacy during the war. The estimated peak size of each army was 700,000 for the north, and 360,000 for the south. So we're an order of magnitude up from the revolutionary era, how does this compare to other wars on the continent? .... Not good, as it turns out. The French revolutionary government managed to get a peak of 800,000 men under arms during their various wars half a century earlier. The Napoleonic wars saw 1,200,000 men under arms on the French side at once, with roughly 1,450,000 British, Prussian, and British soldiers arrayed against them. Napoleon dragged 685,000 men into Russia (and left half of them there...). To put that into perspective, he dragged the entire Union army into Russia, and then left the entire Confederate army dead on the outskirts of Moscow, then he kept fightinng. Heck, even previous conflicts dwarf the civil war. The 30 years war (1618-1648) saw armies of roughly half a million squaring off for 30 years. The Franko-Prussian war (1870-1871) saw a max of 950,000 Germans (we can call them that now) squaring off against 710,000 Frenchmen at once. Side note: the one thing the Civil War has going for it is that it previewed the horrors of WW1 much better than the napoleonic wars did, even if it was smaller. Better artillery and better rifles started showing up by this time, including limited numbers of repeating rifles. Apparently the European powers sent observers to see how this would all work out, and if that's true then holy crap did they not learn the right lessons. And between these large conflicts you find .... nothing. From 1800 to 1810 the US had less than 10,000 men under arms total (excluding reserves). You see a nice little spike of 20,000 or so around the war of 1812, having your capital burned will do that to you, but it's all kind of cute compared to the millions of men under arms trying to kill each other in Europe at that exact time. The numbers remain in the 20-40k range until the Civil War, and then it climbs into the heady territory of .... 50,000 men and slowly climbing. At the start of WWI the US had 130,000 men under arms, less than half the number of casualties that the French would suffer in the first month. The first battles of WWI would show the French and Germans committing twice as many men to a single battle each as the US had available in total. Of course, we know how this ends. The US eventually builds up its army and comes in to finish off an exhausted Germany. Then we start keeping larger and larger armies until today, when we outspend the next 7 countries combined. Nowadays we absolutely do keep a very large army, but from the very beginning? Not so much.
  - cdoxsey 8y ago
    The us spends money on everything. Charity: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Giving_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Giving_Index Education: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp Research: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_researc... Etc. Pick your stats and you can tell any story.
    - yayana 8y ago
      I don't know, I think you would have to limit yourself to federal or at least government spending before you couldn't tell many stories. But still. The details in education put the US at #4 even for lower school (where the US understands the same obligations) including all source of money? The US doesn't want education very much. (I could say there is an education cult in the US, but not that the US is an education cult.)
dba7dba 8y ago
>> The U.S. spends more on arms and armies than the next seven biggest spenders combined. I think that is one fact Trump turned around to use as his talking point. That seems to be one reason Trump seems to be annoyed with NATO about. He claims US has to spend that much more because NATO and other allies are not spending enough. Or so he says. Honestly though, what doesn't compute is following events/articles: 1. this article about antiwar movement 2. the airstrikes in Yemen by Saudi 3. SV happily taking investment of a few dozen billions of dollars from Saudi as posted on HN just a little while ago. https://qz.com/1426370/silicon-valley-is-awash-with-saudi-arabian-money-heres-what-theyre-investing-in/ https://qz.com/1426370/silicon-valley-is-awash-with-saudi-ar...
- drawnwren 8y ago
  That's because it's not an antiwar movement. It's a self empowerment movement disguised as an anti war movement. It's the same reason we didn't see any real difference on war policies between the candidates in 2016. People aren't currently concerned with war. They're concerned with feeling good about their choices re: war.
ummonk 8y ago
6,000 civilians in Syria and Iraq is probably a gross underestimate, but regardless, it is quite small a price to pay for fighting ISIS, which has wrecked far more lives. The real issue was the conditions that created ISIS in the first place, in which US foreign policy played a huge role.
mtgx 8y ago
> killed 6,000 civilians I assume those are the official numbers. But remember the U.S. doesn't count any male it kills with drone strikes that is over 16 years old as a civilian. The real number is probably at least an order of magnitude larger, if no two orders of magnitude larger.
- l0b0 8y ago
  While I agree it must be higher, the population does not consist of anywhere near 90%, let alone 99%, men over the age of 16.
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
One of the major problems with statistics like these is that they don't talk about the context of the relationships here. Since the 90s, the Executive branch and US Congress has used the Military to do a lot of non-military stuff, that arguably the State Department or other non-military organizations should be doing. There are a lot of reasons for this: 1. At 600,000+ FTE's, the DoD has the largest number of personnel in the Federal Government 2. Military members are trained not just for their specialty, but to do a wide variety of administrative, management, financial and medical tasks that can be used in non-military capacities. 3. It's often easier to tack on money for non-military specific functions to augment military organizations, than it is to create new organizations. As a result of this, the DoD is constantly asked to do things that are not directly related to combat in support of international relations, international logistics, basic services and basic research worldwide.
- Hasz 8y ago
  Absolutely, the military continues to take on a variety of non-military functions. That being said, it does not detract from the point that the first use case is for war, and as long as these many other org exist under the DoD structure, the first case will be for war, always.
  - honestlyidk 8y ago
    As bluntly as you want to state that it doesnt become a better of an argument. What would be your alternative. The above poster seems to have given a pretty clear reason why we would want the military to take on these tasks (variety of skill in personel). Do you have a cheaper better way? This sound like the most efficient thing that the government has done. Its probably also a good way to instill compassion in our ranks by having them perform civilian tasks. Instead of everyone just being something they shoot or dont shoot in these countries.
    - Hasz 8y ago
      Rollout the "non-military stuff" and move the "wide variety of administrative, management, financial and medical tasks" into a proper group like the State Department or some new group with no final militaristic consideration. Doing this would take political capital, which is why it's not popular practice. The issue is that the military takes on so many roles that it becomes our first choice in dealing with problems, whether they require the military or not. So we go at problems with the military mindset, then we're surprised when we find a military solution. Let's go in for peace, diplomacy and honest-to-god negotiation instead of imposing our will on countries with air superiority and more guns than people. Maybe we'd foster a little less resentment in countries we're in if we stopping occupying their airspace and bombing them 10,000 feet and 400mi away.

by Hasz 8y ago

partycoder 8y ago

The US also spends more than any country in healthcare. But most of that money only pays for administrative overhead like insurance companies, doctors filling endless paperwork to avoid being sued, or overpriced medication. It does not result in patients being healthier. Similarly, measuring the performance of a logistics company by gallons of gas consumed would be pretty dumb right? People would just drive in circles to consume more gas. Spending is about input, not output.

yayana 8y ago
> Spending is about input, not output. Spending is the measure of intention. The US intends to be the world's healthiest war cult.
- dba7dba 8y ago
  What's really interesting is that in 1930's, US had one of the smallest army/armed forces of developed nations. In 1939, which was three months before England declared war on Germany, US Army had about 180,000 men, ranked 19th in the world and smaller than Portugal’s". Had there been no birth of communism and Nazism and Japanese militarism, it might have stayed that way. But those did come about, Britain's dominance (also France) of the globe was to be replaced, which turned out to be US and not communism/Nazism/other-ism. And I am personally mightily thankful for that.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    We also didn’t have any neighbors that were anywhere close to our power. If the US/Mexico relationship was anywhere as fraught as say, Prussia/France, we would’ve had a much larger army back in the 1930s.
    - dba7dba 8y ago
      Totally agree. US had no need for a big army, but saw the need for a bigger navy to protect sea lane approaches to US Continent, and thus had a fairly sizable Navy. But in modern day with big jets, fast transports, such stance of not having army big enough seems not wise.
      - partycoder 8y ago
        The US required a large, competent army from the very beginning: to gain its independence from Great Britain and to stay united after secession attempts.
        village-idiot 8y ago
        That's .... really not correct. Let's start with the revolutionary wars. About 200,000 Americans picked up arms during the revolutionary war, which is a lot! Especially next to the 121,000 troops the British had in 1781. Except that 200,000 is wartime total, while the 121,000 figure is all at once in 1781. The average number of men under arms that the Americans had was about 40,000, roughly on par with the 48,000 committed by the British in the colonies. Keep in mind that this was a demobilized and underfunded British army, with the British coffers being empty after the 7 years war. There are a series of battles on the continent that would see more men committed to a single battle than the Americans had under arms at once during the revolutionary wars. The Prussians (Germans to you and I) committed 20,000 to the Battle of Mollwitz in 1741, and 36,000 to the Battle of Hochkirch in 1758. The Austrians committed 80,000 to that exact same battle, twice the number of Americans under arms twenty years later. By 1776 Frederick the Great would have 187,000 men under arms during the peace. There is a very good reason why the founding fathers wanted to remain aloof from continental interests. The US Civil War is the bloodiest war that we've participated in, because every casualty was by necessity an American. It was a much larger conflict compared to the revolutionary war, but it doesn't really stand out as conflict containing large armies, compared to other European conflicts before and after. 2,200,000 Americans fought on the Union and 750,000-1,000,000 Americans fought for the Confederacy during the war. The estimated peak size of each army was 700,000 for the north, and 360,000 for the south. So we're an order of magnitude up from the revolutionary era, how does this compare to other wars on the continent? .... Not good, as it turns out. The French revolutionary government managed to get a peak of 800,000 men under arms during their various wars half a century earlier. The Napoleonic wars saw 1,200,000 men under arms on the French side at once, with roughly 1,450,000 British, Prussian, and British soldiers arrayed against them. Napoleon dragged 685,000 men into Russia (and left half of them there...). To put that into perspective, he dragged the entire Union army into Russia, and then left the entire Confederate army dead on the outskirts of Moscow, then he kept fightinng. Heck, even previous conflicts dwarf the civil war. The 30 years war (1618-1648) saw armies of roughly half a million squaring off for 30 years. The Franko-Prussian war (1870-1871) saw a max of 950,000 Germans (we can call them that now) squaring off against 710,000 Frenchmen at once. Side note: the one thing the Civil War has going for it is that it previewed the horrors of WW1 much better than the napoleonic wars did, even if it was smaller. Better artillery and better rifles started showing up by this time, including limited numbers of repeating rifles. Apparently the European powers sent observers to see how this would all work out, and if that's true then holy crap did they not learn the right lessons. And between these large conflicts you find .... nothing. From 1800 to 1810 the US had less than 10,000 men under arms total (excluding reserves). You see a nice little spike of 20,000 or so around the war of 1812, having your capital burned will do that to you, but it's all kind of cute compared to the millions of men under arms trying to kill each other in Europe at that exact time. The numbers remain in the 20-40k range until the Civil War, and then it climbs into the heady territory of .... 50,000 men and slowly climbing. At the start of WWI the US had 130,000 men under arms, less than half the number of casualties that the French would suffer in the first month. The first battles of WWI would show the French and Germans committing twice as many men to a single battle each as the US had available in total. Of course, we know how this ends. The US eventually builds up its army and comes in to finish off an exhausted Germany. Then we start keeping larger and larger armies until today, when we outspend the next 7 countries combined. Nowadays we absolutely do keep a very large army, but from the very beginning? Not so much.
- cdoxsey 8y ago
  The us spends money on everything. Charity: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Giving_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Giving_Index Education: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp Research: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_researc... Etc. Pick your stats and you can tell any story.
  - yayana 8y ago
    I don't know, I think you would have to limit yourself to federal or at least government spending before you couldn't tell many stories. But still. The details in education put the US at #4 even for lower school (where the US understands the same obligations) including all source of money? The US doesn't want education very much. (I could say there is an education cult in the US, but not that the US is an education cult.)

dba7dba 8y ago

>> The U.S. spends more on arms and armies than the next seven biggest spenders combined. I think that is one fact Trump turned around to use as his talking point. That seems to be one reason Trump seems to be annoyed with NATO about. He claims US has to spend that much more because NATO and other allies are not spending enough. Or so he says. Honestly though, what doesn't compute is following events/articles: 1. this article about antiwar movement 2. the airstrikes in Yemen by Saudi 3. SV happily taking investment of a few dozen billions of dollars from Saudi as posted on HN just a little while ago. https://qz.com/1426370/silicon-valley-is-awash-with-saudi-arabian-money-heres-what-theyre-investing-in/ https://qz.com/1426370/silicon-valley-is-awash-with-saudi-ar...

drawnwren 8y ago
That's because it's not an antiwar movement. It's a self empowerment movement disguised as an anti war movement. It's the same reason we didn't see any real difference on war policies between the candidates in 2016. People aren't currently concerned with war. They're concerned with feeling good about their choices re: war.

ummonk 8y ago

6,000 civilians in Syria and Iraq is probably a gross underestimate, but regardless, it is quite small a price to pay for fighting ISIS, which has wrecked far more lives. The real issue was the conditions that created ISIS in the first place, in which US foreign policy played a huge role.

mtgx 8y ago

> killed 6,000 civilians I assume those are the official numbers. But remember the U.S. doesn't count any male it kills with drone strikes that is over 16 years old as a civilian. The real number is probably at least an order of magnitude larger, if no two orders of magnitude larger.

l0b0 8y ago
While I agree it must be higher, the population does not consist of anywhere near 90%, let alone 99%, men over the age of 16.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

One of the major problems with statistics like these is that they don't talk about the context of the relationships here. Since the 90s, the Executive branch and US Congress has used the Military to do a lot of non-military stuff, that arguably the State Department or other non-military organizations should be doing. There are a lot of reasons for this: 1. At 600,000+ FTE's, the DoD has the largest number of personnel in the Federal Government 2. Military members are trained not just for their specialty, but to do a wide variety of administrative, management, financial and medical tasks that can be used in non-military capacities. 3. It's often easier to tack on money for non-military specific functions to augment military organizations, than it is to create new organizations. As a result of this, the DoD is constantly asked to do things that are not directly related to combat in support of international relations, international logistics, basic services and basic research worldwide.

Hasz 8y ago
Absolutely, the military continues to take on a variety of non-military functions. That being said, it does not detract from the point that the first use case is for war, and as long as these many other org exist under the DoD structure, the first case will be for war, always.
- honestlyidk 8y ago
  As bluntly as you want to state that it doesnt become a better of an argument. What would be your alternative. The above poster seems to have given a pretty clear reason why we would want the military to take on these tasks (variety of skill in personel). Do you have a cheaper better way? This sound like the most efficient thing that the government has done. Its probably also a good way to instill compassion in our ranks by having them perform civilian tasks. Instead of everyone just being something they shoot or dont shoot in these countries.
  - Hasz 8y ago
    Rollout the "non-military stuff" and move the "wide variety of administrative, management, financial and medical tasks" into a proper group like the State Department or some new group with no final militaristic consideration. Doing this would take political capital, which is why it's not popular practice. The issue is that the military takes on so many roles that it becomes our first choice in dealing with problems, whether they require the military or not. So we go at problems with the military mindset, then we're surprised when we find a military solution. Let's go in for peace, diplomacy and honest-to-god negotiation instead of imposing our will on countries with air superiority and more guns than people. Maybe we'd foster a little less resentment in countries we're in if we stopping occupying their airspace and bombing them 10,000 feet and 400mi away.