You are being superlative, but I absolutely believe that the reason we have a bigger military than the next ~10 countries combined is that we want to be the dom

You are being superlative, but I absolutely believe that the reason we have a bigger military than the next ~10 countries combined is that we want to be the dominant superpower. And part of the desire for that dominance is maintaining the USD as the world reserve currency. Whenever a country tries to move commodity trades away from the dollar (iraq oil, iran oil, libya gold, venezuela oil) coincidentally pretexts for military operations against them start being manufactured.