To have a hope of working, you'd need to get the blessing of all of the US, Russia, China, and India (and maybe a couple of countries, but those 4 for sure)--wi

To have a hope of working, you'd need to get the blessing of all of the US, Russia, China, and India (and maybe a couple of countries, but those 4 for sure)--without them, there's simply not enough money in the pie otherwise. And why should those countries agree? The appeal is that it mutual agreement has resulted in arms treaties in the past, but the closer you inspect those prior treaties, the less rosy things look. The interwar naval treaties paused battleship construction for a decade--but even at best, countries were only in nominal compliance with many of the terms, and the construction pause was driven in part by the fact that several countries were rather literally bankrupting themselves trying to keep up, so stopping meant they no longer had to spend money they didn't have. Or you can look at SALT/START, which has lasted longer. But New START is currently on rocky roads, and I wouldn't count on it lasting past this decade. The other US/USSR (now Russia) treaties have been failing (e.g., INF). There's a lot less trust between US, Russia, and China now than there was a decade ago, and with that loss of trust, the threat of war looms larger. Wars--the big messy wars between great powers especially--tend to break out because one side miscalculates what the other side's red lines are. It doesn't even necessarily need to be a direct act by one country that breaks the red line: recall that the proximate act instigating World War I was a terrorist group outside the influence of any of the great powers. So in the current environment, anyone suggesting massive cuts to military spending seems woefully naive.