Military Intervention Pros And Cons

The United States is spending huge amounts of money on military defense when there are other problem areas in our society that are in need of more funding.

$1.754 trillion - that is the current estimated amount the United States has spent on defense-related costs since 2001 (Koshgarian, L., et al., 2015). While the United States spends more on its military than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the U.K., India, France, and Japan combined (Peterson, P., 2016), it has one of the highest rates of poverty among developed countries and lags behind in many social and economic areas. In what other ways can that money benefit the people it is used to protect? Since U.S. military intervention abroad is a controversial topic in of itself, the high cost to

One of the most overlooked is the one people tend to use everyday - domestic infrastructure (i.e. roads and bridges). It has been assessed that 1 in every 5 miles of highway are in poor condition, resulting in longer delays that is estimated to have cost Americans $160 billion in wasted fuel and time in 2014. In addition, poor roads have increased traffic fatalities by 7% from 2014 to 2015 (Sofman, C., et al., 2017). The American Society of Civil Engineering statistic supports my position that more government funds need to be allocated to infrastructure, which will reduce fatalities, and can potentially save lives. According to Henry Blodget, cofounder and editor-in-chief of Business Insider, “On an infrastructure level, the U.S. has become an embarrassment relative to the rest of the world.” He goes on to say, “Gradually shifting a couple hundred billion dollars a year out of military spending and reallocating it to domestic infrastructure spending would not harm the economy--because we would still be spending this money.” (Blodget, H., 2013) Even though Blodget supports the idea that military spending should be reduced, he clarifies that sharply cutting the military budget may weaken the United States’ position in several key areas around the world as well as hammer the economy. However, he explains that even if a couple of billion

I believe education should be made a top priority, as it will consequently increase productivity in all other aspects of society. While some may argue that high military expenditures are necessary to preserve America’s liberties and safety should a threat materialize, I say that the present amount of funds being spent may be overkill; before we prioritize so much of our funds for a war abroad, we must strive to prevent the war at home - the war on economic poverty. Isn't that what we all work so hard to not be in? Overall, my position agrees with and is supported by the different scholars, experts, and facts as evidenced in my paper. I explained how the scholars demonstrated that many parts of American society lack the funding necessary to be efficient, while fully aware of the disproportionate military funding that has less of a direct and immediate impact on the American people. These scholars have also allowed me to put into perspective how human society has always equated its nation’s power on how effective one is able to kill another. With the world possessing nearly 30,000 nuclear weapons, 1,500 ready to be launched at a moment’s notice, and the U.S. holding almost one-third of them