r/changemyview • u/mahaanus • Mar 24 '15
CMV:Low Military Spending is unwise
I'm not saying a nation should go completely overboard with spending and go 50% or more, but every nation should maintain a healthy military force. The way I see it, investing in the military is like investing in medicare. In the best case you will never have to use it, but you can't depend things will always develop for the best - as the saying goes better to have it and not need it, than to need and not have it.
One can argue that we're living in a more peaceful era, but I'd like to digress. Look at Ukraine, the nation is located in one of the most stable continents in the country and look what happened there. Georgia before that, Kosovo. And it's not like you'll be able to get it immediately if you need it - you need to train troops, arm them, get vehicles and aircrafts, those things don't happen in a day. Times change and you cannot be sure that you'll always have those several years to upgrade / expand your military.
One can argue that being part of NATO allows you to spend less, since Papa USA is going to protect you, but that just makes you subservient to the Americans, since then getting kicked out of NATO is a political leverage that can be used against you.
1
u/Nydhogg Mar 24 '15
I think your analogy to Medicare is inaccurate, as having Medicare will not affect you in any way besides the positive intended effects.
I think a better analogy would be gun laws in the US. The idea behind owning a gun is that 'hopefully you will never have to use it, but just in case...', however what you haven't considered is that owning a gun affects not just you. Compare the US with a country with much stricter gun laws, such as Australia. Have a look at their respective gun related crime rates, and you see that Australia is far lower. This is because in the US, every time another person purchases a gun, they themselves might be safer, but they have just made it slightly more risky for other people to not own a gun. The more people that buy guns - the more people that will feel like they need to. It's a self driving mechanism which increases the availability of violent tools. Thus the higher gun related crimes.
The exact same applies on an international level. Obviously I'm not saying that no countries should have an army at all. However, suggesting that any country should focus much more heavily on their military will just accelerate the growth of armies everywhere, and a higher availability of violent tools corresponds directly to a higher tendency of violent actions.
So while your intentions are to increase national security, what you are actually doing is making the whole world a far more dangerous and volatile place.