Why Does the US Spend More on Defense Than 8 Next Countries Combined?

by Leo O’Hagan

The United States spends more on defense than the next eight countries combined. Defense spending accounts for about 20 percent of all federal spending — nearly as much as Social Security, or as much as the combined spending for Medicare and Medicaid.

You really have to wonder at the stupendous amount of money that the US spends on defense, and more importantly, into whose pockets these funds are being channelled. The map below demonstrates clearly how lopsided the situation is from a global perspective. The US taxpayers’ dollar is largely expended on wars in foreign lands rather than on actual “defense” and it is argued that attack “is” the best form of defense.

The very fact that a sense of national paranoia accounts for the main reasoning behind this is something that every American should be questioning. Of course, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have raised the ante and the “poking a stick in the hornet’s nest” analogy rings very true, especially amongst the conservative Christian soldiers of the American right. But is this the right attitude? Jesus did say, “turn the other cheek,” yet somehow the Bible Belt is fully behind the invasion and subjugation of other nations who “appear” to be “agin” you.

Those that flew the planes into the hornet’s nest on September the 11th, 2001 have succeeded in dragging the United States into an endless very expensive war.

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes…known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few…No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
— James Madison, Political Observations, 1795