I'm trying to think if we're forgetting any big pieces. Are each state's national guard funded through the same federal war budget? Or are those partly or fully funded by the individual states?
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- Thread starter siegecrossbow
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So I think to really get an accurate and complete picture, we should factor in the amounts that the states are also contributing to that, adding it to the federal total. Especially since national guard are called to fight abroad as you mentioned. Since they can also be mobilized to perform internal security, especially as highlighted by the recent politically-motivated mobilizations, it makes even more sense to add both their state and federal funding to the total of external forces + internal security. Given how heavily militarized US police forces are, we could argue their budgets should fall under internal security too. I would think they're armed at least as heavily as the People's Armed Police, if not much more so.
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Law enforcement plus national guard would be something like around $200 billion a year total. So that should get added to the other numbers.
What? India, for all its delusions of grandeur, knows full well that it can't sustain a prolonged war. That's why it never even tried to push in with ground forces in Operation Sindoor. Trying to support a war over the high Himalayas is the height of folly, and it's something that India isn't going to try, and it'd probably be very easy to stop.
As for the Pacific front, Korea isn't going to join a crusade against China and Philippines doesn't have an actual military. Hell, Philippines isn't even suitable for building any large scale American bases. The Americans might get moral support from other Western countries, but they're too far away to help much, so it's going to stay at the level of moral support. The same might go for Australia as well.
The chances of an American victory in the Western Pacific is very slim currently, and the these chances are slipping more and more every year.
One big part that tends to get missed in these equivalency the Chinese internal security would also inclue the People's Police so you'd have to include all the local and state-level police forces in the US as well. The reality is that the PLA isn't a huge burden on the Chinese economy and its budget can be significantly increased without too much hardship. On the other hand, the American deficit is getting to crisis levels and even current budget is unsustainable. It can theoretically increase the military budget, but this can only generate marginal improvements because the budget isn't the problem.
China’s debt problem is getting worse as speak, albeit still not as bad as those of US and Japan. The massive HSR network, the 2009 bailout, BRI, internal/external security and MIC2025 subsidies and research funds aren’t without opportunities costs and long-term debts, albeit all are necessary because China needs to move up the global value chain and lives in an increasingly dangerous neighbourhood.
Chinese debts are investments that's already demonstrate successful ROI, US debt are also arguably intended to be investments to be recovered through imperial exploitation and its only a problem because those investments failed, but Japaneses debt are pure debt and that's why their economy has shrunk for decades straight.
