> Please explain why we have not seen a significant drop in defense spending during the periods when the threat of war has lessened. Especially after the fall o

> Please explain why we have not seen a significant drop in defense spending during the periods when the threat of war has lessened. Especially after the fall of the Soviet Union when the world was decidedly unipolar for more than a decade. But we have. See the second chart, covering Defence spending of the United Kingdom from 1900-2020. https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/past_spending https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/past_spending Spiked over 45% of GDP during WWI, and over 50% during WWII. Took a small bump over 10% that I believe was the Korean War, and has been fairly consistently drifting downward since, and is roughly comparable to 1900s pre-war spending. The United States has a similar graph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Defense_Spending_as_a_Percent_of_GDP.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... and while it's still nowhere near pre-war spending, there's been a similar downward trend over the last 50 years.