auntblabby wrote:
judging by how much we spend, i suspect 275 bil is but a drop in the bucket.
Australia, Canada, and the US, are all roughly the same physical size. But when I was in public school in circa 1970 Canada had one tenth of our population, and Australia one twentieth of our population size. The gap is probably less now. But still...
a) so multiply that 275 billion figure by twenty - and that gives a rule of thumb comparison to the US defense budget- relative to the sizes of the respective countries. It would be as if Trump or Biden were to add five or six
trillion dollars to our defense budget in a relative terms.
b) military power is intertwined with population size. We all worry about overpopulation these days. But we dont complain about it times of total war. No one said that there were "too many Americans at Normandy beach, or too many Americans at Iwo Jima". A thinly populated country like Australia will always be weak, and will always rely on alliances -with Britain, with the US, with America's Asian allies (the Phillipines, Japan, and South Korea), and maybe the EU, against a neighborhood bully like China. The one silver lining is that China's best buddy, Putin, has even MORE to fear from China than Australia does. Siberia is a mineral rich thinly populated region much like Australia. But unlike Australia it actually borders China. China may...smoke some bath salts someday...and chew its best friends face off!