As much as we spend on our military, is it enough? The essential question for the US and every country is whether military spending is sufficient to meet defense needs and strategic aims. Observers can draw useful conclusions by watching whether a country's defense spending, operations and procurement, and force levels and quality are going up, stable, or declining. When that is taken into account, China and Russia must be recognized as buying new enhancements to their military power and becoming major strategic challenges for the US. This in turn requires more US military spending.
Is the US going to be able to deter and contain Russia and China? Ominously, both have embraced revanchist thinking as a basis for otherwise threadbare regime legitimacy. This has stoked popular sentiment favoring military adventures. Both countries are now bullying their neighbors, acting on dodgy territorial claims, and beginning to project military power far from their borders.
The growing rivalry between the US and China has especially unsettling implications when viewed through the classic Thucydidean rationale. As a rising power, China is spurred by the motives of glory and interest to expand at the expense of the United States and her allies. Most times in history that this has occurred, the result has been a catastrophic war. Does anyone with a lick of sense want that to happen if we can prevent it for an extra one or two hundred billion dollars a year in military spending?
[Is the US going to be able to deter and contain Russia and China? Ominously, both have embraced revanchist thinking as a basis for otherwise threadbare regime legitimacy. This has stoked popular sentiment favoring military adventures. Both countries are now bullying their neighbors, acting on dodgy territorial claims, and beginning to project military power far from their borders.]
Alexander was the king of a united Greece. Did he need to conquer Persia? Only if he wanted children and cities (Kandahar in Afghanistan, Iskandaria in Egypt, Iskandariyah in Iraq) to be named after him thousands of years later.
Rulers of great nations are already prominent men. They want first place - not just on the list of their nations’ rulers, but on the list of great (i.e. powerful) rulers spanning all of history. To do that, they need to expand the territory handed to them at the time of their ascension to power. Nobody remembers the rulers who made their citizens rich. Everyone remembers the ones who greatly expanded the borders of their nations. These people are not interested in defense - they’re concerned with cementing reputations that will match Alexander’s or Julius Caesar’s.