Good News, Russia and China: The Great Shrinking of the US Military Is Here

Justin T. Johnson

Security,

As Russia and China's military mighty keeps expanding...

Every year at this time, we see the same kind of headlines: “U.S. biggest military spender in the world.” They’re are all based on the release of the global military spending database, an annual report compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

What the headlines usually miss is that U.S. defense spending is going down while global military spending is going up. The fact that the U.S. spends more on defense than any other individual nation dramatically misses the point.

First, we live in a world of growing threats against U.S. vital interests. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are driving the details of the Pentagon’s latest defense budget proposal. In the 2016 Index of U.S. Military Strength, China, Russia, and Iran were assessed as being particularly aggressive against the interests of the United States, while North Korea was rated as downright hostile. Each of these countries is actively attempting to coerce and bully its neighboring nations, and they all pose high to severe threats to the United States and our interests.