Are you sure North Korea stuck to their bargain; they often change their mind or even lie about things, violating treaties all the time.
Which are you specifically referring to?
For instance, there's a list here, but it excludes North Korea, Cuba, and a few other country's, as well as, obviously "secret spending". Like Pakistan and Iran supporting the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Fun fact, Pakistan created the Taliban, and provided air support in the early wars with Afghanistan involving the Taliban. Since they've denied any involvement and ceased providing obvious support, since the Americans threatened invasions, the money doesn't count as their spending, even though it was a very sizable force.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
I was referring to Agreed Framework from 1994.
About numbers. Yeah defenetly there's a mistake in them somewhere. Like they say statistics is the biggest lie ever. But DPRK, Cuba, Pakistan, Iran can't "secretly" spend enough to out match you. The proportions of the US spending compared to the rest will in large part stay the same. Now that said just look at the list. China, Russia - these are one of the most powerful militarizes in the world. They don't come anywhere close to you. UK, France, Germany - also highly technologically developed nations, similar market situation as in the States, they too manage with roughly 1/10 of your budget each.
I'm not saying the US should get their spending down to 100-200 billion. Cutting it by 60-80 billions would ease your internal issues and still maintain roughly the same force you currently have. In case of developing NATO's "smart defence" you could probably cut it by half. But this is much more complicated.
Well, if we look at it
"In October 2002, a U.S. delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly visited North Korea to confront the North Koreans with the U.S. assessment that they had a uranium enrichmentprogram.[29] Both parties' reports of the meeting differ. The U.S. delegation believed the North Koreans had admitted the existence of a highly enriched uranium program.[30] The North Koreans stated Kelly made his assertions in an arrogant manner, but failed to produce any evidence such as satellite photos, and they responded denying North Korea planned to produce nuclear weapons using enriched uranium. They went on to state that as an independent sovereign state North Korea was entitled to possess nuclear weapons for defense, although they did not possess such a weapon at that point in time.[5][31][32]Relations between the two countries, which had seemed hopeful two years earlier, quickly deteriorated into open hostility.[10]
The HEU intelligence that James Kelly’s accusation is based on is still controversial: According to the CIA fact sheet to Congress on November 19, 2002, there was "clear evidence indicating the North has begun constructing a centrifuge facility" and this plant could produce annually enough HEU for two or more nuclear weapons per year when it is finished. However, some experts assessed that the equipment North Korea imported was insufficient evidence of a production-scale enrichment program.[33]
KEDO members considered in November 2002 whether to halt the fuel oil shipments in response to the previous month's developments. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly warned Japanese officials that the U.S. Congress would not fund such shipments in the face of continued violations. The shipments were halted in December.[34]
On January 10, 2003, North Korea again announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.[35] On February 10, 2005, North Korea finally declared that it had manufactured nuclear weapons as a "nuclear deterrent for self-defence".[36] On October 9, 2006, North Korea conducted a nuclear test. US intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has manufactured a handful of simple nuclear weapons."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework
The U.S. suspected them of creating things that could be used to create nuclear weapons, and just 2 years later after it broke down, they had nuclear weapons. Given the general infrastructure required to create nukes, it must have been fairly well ingrained with tremendous government support this entire time for it to have been developed. It seems as if North Korea was clearly violating their end first, long before the agreements broke down, as they at least had the ability to make nuclear weapons pretty much this entire time.
The real issue with the U.S. cutting spending is the argument we should be like Europe. Since it is the U.S., not Europe, who has by and large won and been involved in most military conflicts around the world in the last 70 years, it's hard to argue that we should be this way when their contributions are admittingly meager to international conflicts. In other words, just stating "these guys over there don't' spend much, and we should be like them" when we haven't done a threat assessment seeing if we should get rid of our military or reduce military spending and arms build up, to see if less would be a sufficient deterrent or sufficient in international responses, is a tad presumptuous.
For instance, during the earthquake in Japan, in was U.S. aircraft carriers that were there, and prevented most of the nuclear materials from escaping, potentially saving unknown thousands of lives by keeping it contained. In Haiti, we sent in troops, and now in the Philippines, largely through the effort of the U.S. military. A good 50 billion of our military dollars goes to foreign aid, such as foreign military aid (like we give the British and French special forces U.S. training, and finance it so they aren't concerned with cost) and even more is spent on general food aid, not just for disasters. Furthermore, we still have bases in Germany and Japan, and have a substantial amount of international bases around the world, which makes up a substantial portion of our deployed troops in general, and a disproportionate amount of the spending per soldier. Since these things are largely necessary, and no other country contributes anywhere near as much as us, as they don't even have the means to provide that kind of rapid aid deployment as is, that alone could be making the difference. In general, it's a little presumptuous to automatically assume that the U.S. military should match our rates to international levels in the first place, since we defend the whole world and contribute to the United Nations, and so actual threat assessments are a bit more necessary. Simply that the Europeans do not get involved does not mean that somebody does not still need to get involved, so we ought to base our spending and military responses on that, instead of relative spending in the first place.
It's a tad ironic that China has put down substantially less money in the Tsunami incidents in Japan than the U.S., even when China is most at risk for the radiation, and China contributed little to the over-all clean up, instead relying on the U.S. to do it for them, when they wouldn't do it themselves.
It's clear that major powers in the world not only wouldn't help out others, but won't put in the effort or money to help themselves; which is odd, considering that China did put a lot more money into this amount of spending than say, the incident in the Philippines, where the Colbert Report outspent China in aid (China put down just 100,000 dollars). So, can the U.S. or world afford for the U.S. to cut spending? That's the real question at hand in my opinion, and would other people pick up the slack, not relative GDP. In my opinion, I wouldn't say we are at the moment, but it may change in the future.
Edited by Manoka, 24 December 2013 - 12:31 PM.
