Robert Farley is right about this:
Absent supplementals, the United States currently runs a defense budget of just over half a trillion dollars, a number which does not include defense-related spending in other departments. By the kindest calculations, this means that the U.S. spends roughly four to six times as much on defense as our closest competitor. By less kind calculations, we spend about 10 times as much as any other country in the world, accounting for somewhere around 50 percent of aggregate world defense spending. Although the absolute numbers have changed since the early 1990s, the ratios have not. The U.S. has simply dominated world defense spending since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in spite of the fact that most of the other top defense spenders (France, U.K., Japan) are close U.S. allies.If an analyst had proposed, during the Reagan administration, that the U.S. outspend the Soviet Union by a factor of 5-10, he or she would have been laughed out of government by Republicans and Democrats alike. Today, however, debate over the defense budget almost never results from the question "How much do we need to spend?", or even "Should we spend more or less?", but rather "How much more should we spend?" And this is simply insane, given the massive advantage that the United States enjoys over any potential competitor, and the security gains that the United States has accumulated since the end of the Cold War.
But even if surveys do suggest "a new progressive America," the progressives in America haven't so totally forgotten the recent conservative America that they'd dare suggest shrinking our military. And their numbers don't suggest that they should. On the foreign policy front, 57 percent still agree that "military force is the best way to combat terrorism and make America safer," and CAP is lamely left trumpeting that a majority also believes Americans needs "a positive image." Nor has Obama has spent much time making the case for reduced spending on defense. During the campaign, he promised to expand the army by 90,000 troops.
