I don't know. It seems to me that compared to every other form of state spending (roads, healthcare, etc), military spending is conspicuously poor in terms of r

I don't know. It seems to me that compared to every other form of state spending (roads, healthcare, etc), military spending is conspicuously poor in terms of return on investment. I think the US is a very weird state - it's probably the most consistently old-school liberal state in the world, it has negligible worker activism, colossal natural resources, and its position as world hegemon gives it all sorts of non-imitable economic advantages. I don't think you can copy the US if you're not the US - the closest in terms of economic policy is the UK, and the UK economy is kind of like a corpse in a bin bag.