ESSAY Military Spending Is It Justified

With the numbers totaled the defense budget is currently sitting at a solid 3.5 percent of our GDP and there are still questions on how much more we can put in to make this country safe. The White House is calling for more money to be spent on national defense and their economists say that the United States can withstand a gross spending of somewhere around 9 to 10 percent of our GDP. The money to pay for any

Something that I vehemently disagree on with both political parties is defense spending. In their platforms, both parties seem to favor an increase in funding, even if it is a bit more discretely worded under the Democratic Party’s platform. In my view, we allocate too much of our country’s resources to the military, and neglect many of its other needs in doing so. The United States military is by far and away the most puissant armed organization in the world. Here are some figures that help illustrate just how pragmatic that last statement is. In the 2015 fiscal year we spent 598 billion dollars on the military; that’s over fifty percent of the federal government’s discretionary spending.(1) In 2016, only 19 of 194 nations had a higher GDP than America’s defense budget; that means that the U.S. spends more money per year on its military than the total value of all goods produced and services provided in a country in a year in 90 percent of the world’s nations.(2) According to 2016 statistics the U.S. spends more on its defense than the next eight countries combined.(3) That same year, China was second with a 215 billion dollar defense budget and Russia was third at approximately 69 billion.

“The United States spent $598.5 billion dollars alone on the military in 2015. That is 54% of all spending in 2015. The US only spent $70 billion (6%) on education and $13.1 billion (1%) on food and agriculture.” (“Military Spending”). This shows what Americans really value.

This creates a budget deficit because there is more being spent than what’s being brought it.

The forty-five years from the dropping of the atom bombs to the end of the Soviet Union, can be seen as the era of the new conflict between two major states: United States of America (USA) and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). According to Hobsbawm, ‘cold war’ was the constant confrontation of the two super powers which emerged from the Second World War. At that time the entire generation was under constant fear of global nuclear battles. It was widely believed that it could break out at any moment. (Hobsbawm, 1994) The consequences of the ‘power vacuum’ in central Europe, created by the defeat of Germany, gave rise to these two super powers (Dunbabin, 1994). The world was divided into

The purpose of this analysis is to examine the rhetorical appeals on an argument presented by two different authors who have written about the subject of the Military’s Budget. In the article, “Yes, Of Course We Should Cut Military Spending!” by Henry Blodget, He argues that Military Spending should be cut and given to more needed civil programs. Contrary to Henry, the article, “Reckless Cuts to US Military Spending Leaving America Vulnerable.” By Steven Cohen puts forth the argument that Military Budget cuts will leave the US Military unable to carry out their duties and will but this country’s interest at risk. This paper will examine the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos found within each of the articles presented by these authors. In addition, highlights of the author’s similarities and differences in style will be noted here as well.

The military is something that has been a bit costly for a while, the US according to a graph given by Peter G. Peterson spends an average of more than seven

The United States has a debt of $16.394 trillion and had spent $682 billion in 2012. Also the pentagon had also spent $2.7 trillion and has no trace of where or how it could have been used by the military. The amount spent is unnecessary because being the policemen of the world is not helping fix any of the issues the policemen’s own country has.

The United States spends far more than any other country on defense and security with no end in sight to their expenditures. The total military spending by the United States is nearly equal to the combined military spending of every other nation combined. This unreasonable amount of spending hinders the capacity to provide basic needs, as well as eliminating money that can be used to resolve other domestic issues, while at the same time allowing for short-term economic prosperity and increasing our national defense capacity.

The United Stated government only spends about 5,2% of their GDP(global domestic product) for educational purposes, and in money, that is equivalent to $898.5 million out of the $17.97 trillion that they make. (CIA Factbook) Because of this shortage of funding, many schools, especially public schools in Chicago, are forced to work with less money, and don’t allow them to be able to create extracurricular programs for the students, make renovations in the school, or do other things of that nature. The total CPS budget is $5.69 billion, but they are facing a shortfall of one billion dollars.(Bradley) That is about 18% of CPS’ total budget that is being taken away from them. This shows how big a problem these cuts actually are and how much it affects the schools and the community. One of the areas of the country’s budget that could be spent less on is military. The United States’ total discretionary spending, which is the government spending implemented through an appropriations bill and are usually necessities, is around $1.11 trillion in 2015. The military expenditure 53.71% of the total discretionary spending, which is $598.49 billion, while the government only spends 6.28% on education, which is $69.98 billion.(nationalpriorities.org) That is a $528.51 billion difference! Does the United States actually have to spend that much on their military? The United States is the country that spends the most on its military, at about $1.56 trillion

The authorities in the army stand for patriotism, deceive the soldiers by pressuring them to serve their patriotic duty in wondrous war, yet they fight for personal power and toss the

While this appears to be a good datapoint in that it is a direct correlation to “butter” related activities. Training is relative to education and compensation is relative to pay and benefits. A number of questions which arise: If 80% of the military budget is relative to “butter” related activities, and 20% is being spent for direct defense related efforts, then why are these costs included in the defense budget? Would shifting the costs for military training be better suited at the Department of Labor (current budget of $11.8 billion)? Would shifting the costs for compensation related healthcare be better situated at the Department of Health and Human Services (current budget s $77.1 billion) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (current budget s $65.3 billion)?

The first article argues that we should not increase our defense spending. Jake Novak, is a senior columnist for CNBC.com and is the author of the article. Novak says that President Trump could buy more jets, ships and military technology like he plans to do without raising the budget. He says that the United States spends over $155 billion per year to maintain our overseas military bases. He doesn 't propose that we should eliminate all of the approximately 800 military installations we have in about 80 countries, including 174 in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea. Each of those bases cost extensive amounts of money to maintain, feed soldiers, and payments to the foreign countries to use their land. Novak questions the

Post-Cold War Period Causes of Conflict The end of the Cold War meant that the ideological conflict of dominance between East (Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) and West (USA and Western Europe) was over. Contrary to the expectations that world would be much safer in the post-Cold War, United States and Soviet Union were faced with new security issues that they did not know how to deal with. The objective of this essay is to show that with all these changes that occurred with the end of the Cold War, causes of the conflict indeed altered from the classic ones.