Honestly, Russia and China play their cards a lot smarter than we do.
They use their money to develop very advanced weapons. They do not spend money on nation building and getting bogged down in guerilla warfare anymore; the Russians learned their lesson from Afghanistan.
And, as I mentioned, they certainly don't spend $1 trillion plus on social welfare every year as we do.
We no longer have the technical edge in advanced weapons. The Russians can do anything we can do, and often do it better. The Chinese get much of their technology from the Russians, and will soon be on par in their own design bureaus. The Russians are far more advanced than us in ABM systems, SAMs, ICBMs, and other areas.
We are becoming third rate due to the massive social welfare spending, and due to the fact we are spending our DOD $ on police action in foreign lands instead of keeping pace with Russia and China in advanced weapon design and procurement.
Yes, our best army division can out pound their best army division since we spend more in that area. But, we are starting to lose bigtime in advanced weapon design and procurement for the reasons mentioned above.
First off - I too would like to see social spending cut and channeled into tax cuts and more military spending and am certainly not in favor of spending money to help ungrateful third world countries.
While the asymmetric force strategy of Russia and China pays dividends in their ability to match or better our missile capabilities it has resulted in a Russian army that is underpaid, underfed and demoralized - and unable (even operating without the political hindrances we burden ourselves with in Iraq) to to maintain security within its own borders. As for China, it has plenty of naval ambitions (Spratly islands, Taiwan) but no amphibious capability to speak of. I'm not sure how smart they are in fact playing it.</p>
ROFL. Man, you may have set a FR record for packing ridiculous statements in one post.
The Russians are saddled with a drunken, barbaric, unskilled conscript army and an almost totally rusting Navy. Most of the Chinese defense budget still goes for massive infantry formations of no use in a war against the US.
They do not spend money on nation building and getting bogged down in guerilla warfare anymore; the Russians learned their lesson from Afghanistan.
Except for that violent guerilla war in Chechnya the Russians have been involved in for forever.