Military Spending On The Military Essay

Militaries are made to fight simple as that, so it may seem odd to us to think about anything but warfare when we think about our own armed forces. The reason armed forces even exist is to carry out armed operations against opposing forces. Realistically and thankfully though our countries service members spend almost all, if not all of their time in service training and preparing to participate in a conflict. Some people compare warfare to an art and others look back at warfare in history and call it a science. Regardless of what one is more inclined to compare war to, it is a fact war favors the prepared. He who has the best training, tactics, and planning is usually the victor, even if their number of men and firepower is far less. For a …show more content…
This statement comes from history. Taking a step back to right after World War I we see a dramatic drop in government spending on the military. The budget line for the military would continue to drop consistently until a day that would live in infamy, Pearl Harbor. From that point on for 5 years there would be an outpouring of funds from the government to fight World War II. After the war this increase in military spending would continue to rise decades and according to Chantrill, “In peace time, the US government used to spend very little on defense, about one percent of GDP. But that changed after World War II when the United States found itself in a global contest against Communism. Ever since, defense spending has never been less than 3.6 percent of GDP. In wartime, of course, the United States spends as much as it can command.” (Chantrill, 2015). The fall of communism, however would lead to another drop in funding until the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When funding drops post war, this takes a toll on training that is provided to the troops in the peacetime