How Big Should the Military Be?

What's the ideal size for the U.S. military so it can deal with any potential threat?

There’s often a debate about how big our military budget should be. It’s not even the biggest part of the federal budget anymore — that’s entitlements. But if it’s WWIII, we don’t need the sick or the poor — we need weaponry! So, how much should we be spending on the military?

To answer that, we must figure out what our military needs to do. So, let’s list all potential threats.

We need to be prepared in case China declares war on us. China is probably our biggest threat right now. Currently, they’re coming after us economically and by making new flus in their virus labs, but what if they decide to come at us militarily? They don’t have as great military tech as us (Communism makes you dumb), but they have a lot of people if they armed them all. We must ensure our military is big enough and equipped enough to take on a billion Chinese.

And what if Russia joins in the fight? And if China starts attacking us, the Russians might join in. I mean, they’re kind of angry at us for how we didn’t let them invade Ukraine in peace. So, to keep our country safe under any condition, we need a military well-funded enough to fight a billion Chinese and… however many Russians there are. I don’t know that number off hand, but it’s a pretty big country. Maybe it’s another billion. And, oh yeah: They have nukes. We need Star Wars space lasers to shoot down their nukes.

And what if the Middle East senses weakness? And we all know the Middle East doesn’t like us. Most of them don’t do anything about that because we’re extra good at bombing the Middle East — we do it like all the time. But if our fight with China and Russia distracts us enough, maybe they’ll take the opportunity to fight us in earnest. Of course, they don’t have great militaries, so perhaps we can repurpose our Star Wars space lasers to zap them whenever they emerge from caves with AK-47s. This one might not cost a lot extra, but we need to factor it in.

And what if Europe sees their opportunity? We think Europe is our friend, but they’re a bunch of snooty socialists. They could turn on us if they think we’re weak. And a lot of Europe is rich countries — I mean, not as rich as us, but they’ll have some tech. Like, we have stealth bombers, but can we defend against stealth bombers? We might need de-stealthifying technology. Better get funding that.

And what if Canada joins in? Oh yeah, and there’s kind of like our own Europe right above us along our frozen border to the north. What if they join in the fight against us? I mean, if you look at Canadians like Justin Trudeau, it seems like all we’d need is loud noises to scare them away, but that will take time when we’re in a battle with the rest of the world.

What’s South America up to? I forgot about them! They’re like a whole continent just below us. We did make that moat — the Panama Canal — to keep them away, but who knows what they’re up to down there. I can name like three countries in South America — Brazil, Columbia, and Chile (the thin one) — but I’m pretty sure there are more. We need enough military to also deal with whatever they have going on along with fighting the rest of the world.

What if aliens attack? Okay, so we have a large enough and well-funded military to fight the rest of the world at once — just in case — but what if, while we’re taking on China and Belgium all at once, aliens attack? And they’ll probably side with our enemies since aliens are evil. So, to protect this country, we have to be able to fight not only the whole world but at least one other world as well. Better build up Trump’s Space Force.

What if Comoros attacks? Honestly, in my entire life, I have never heard of this country. I haven’t the faintest clue what continent it’s on; for all I know, it could be right next to us. Do you know there are hundreds of countries on this planet? So while we’re fighting countries people have heard of, plus aliens, these little countries we don’t even know about could attack us, and we don’t even know where they are. There’s only one solution: a death star. It’s a worst-case scenario, but we need the ability to blow up the whole world. Comoros is somewhere on Earth, so if we take it out, we got them. And we can also threaten the homeworld of those aliens if they don’t back off. Everyone back off! We have a death star!

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So, adding all that up, we’ll need about $233 trillion per year to fund a military that can keep us safe in any foreseeable scenario. Currently, the GDP of the entire world, though, is only about $96 trillion. So, to keep us safe, we need to really concentrate on capitalism until we’re much richer and can fund a death star (and maybe a second as a backup). So get to making businesses people; the lives of your citizens depend on it!