Carly's Big Military

Why do Carly and friends keep talking about growing our military? Our military is already roughly 4x bigger than Russia's. Why would being 6x or 10x make any difference to Putin? He doesn't have to go head to head so far because he nibbles at the corners. The size thing is not logical, Carly. Your HP calculator needs batteries.

If we went to war directly against Russian troops, we will have roughly a 3 to 1 kill ratio. That sounds good until you realize that Russia has traditionally thrown people at war and thus we may have to lose a half million on our side for them to start to care. Dictators don't give a [bleep] about death of their subjects.

Same with China; they'll throw people at the problem and a lot of Americans will lose their life. More machines won't change the balance that much, and trigger an arms race anyhow.

All else being equal, a bigger military is better, but it won't noticeably change our relationship with Russia or China because death worries non-democracies much less.