How well they work is not the point: how much they cost is.
I am glad you are not in charge of running a war. I wonder if anyone did a cost analysis of how much the atomic bomb cost before launching into its development. Or a Polaris submarine that has never fired a missile in anger? The objective in warfare is to win. Losing is far more costly.
It doesn't matter if the war is economic, or physical. Either way, our side needs to win.
> I wonder if anyone did a cost analysis of how much the atomic bomb cost before launching into its development. Or a Polaris submarine that has never fired a missile in anger?
Evidently not, which probably accounts for a large part of the US national debt and the waste and corruption in your arms establishment.
> So, NZ has an annual budget 7 times that of Chicago’s. You are comparing apples to oranges.
Possibly, in that more money is extracted from the ever-suffering NZ taxpayers than is extracted from their Chicago counterparts (”budgets” don’t grow on trees, as you will be aware. They all come out of somebody’s pocket)
When you look at the numbers you’ve produced it is truly remarkable that NZ can afford our military AND enjoy an excellent socialized medical scheme AND provide half of the South Pacific with our foreign aid and defense AND end up with budget surpluses to tide us thru difficult times like our current economic crisis.
Yes, we are vulnerable to foreign invasion: Indonesia is certainly splitting at the seams and in need of more room and resources. Even if we spent 100% of our GDP on defense that geopolitical fact could never change. There are only a finite number of parameters we can affect in any meaningful way. So our Nation spends as wisely as it can and contributes where it can make the best impact.
That still leaves a population the size of Chicago to run a complex country in the middle of the South Pacific with negligible natural resources to fund everything with. Whether you think it is fair or not, that is the reality we have.