I think a major issue, certainly within the UK, but most probably in other countries is that money, within the military is misdirected. While certain elements of the army are squeaky clean, others are a shambles. Without research into the matter i can only speculate, however i would bet that the majority of the British army’s funds don’t go on the troops on the ground helping refugees. It cannot be denied, as you mentioned that yes, often the military is used to help in foreign aid. There have been circumstances at home in the UK (not infrequently) where flood victims have been rescued by the RAF. Despite this however, is it necessary for these troops to be equipped with state of the art weapons and technology in order to distribute food to starving people or air life flood victims to safety?

As Jeremy mentioned, the post is mainly focusing on the United States. We felt it necessary expose just how much “the leaders of the free world” spend on what could be argued as tools of oppression rather than liberation. This post doesn’t cover where the money spent on the military goes. For example, i would be interested to know how much is spent on the manufacturing of weapons which are actually sold and sent to places like Sudan. How much money is made from selling weapons and how much money is in turn spent in aid. That is something you’ve made me consider and perhaps seek to address.

As for the nuclear issue, you suggest we need weapons as shields to protect us from offensive action. A nuclear weapon is never defensive, except as a deterrent, and since I cannot think of a single good reason to ever launch one at another country, they’re actually a pretty empty threat. Wars aren’t against nation states any more. You can’t nuke the Taliban, or Al Qaeda. Nukes are a relic of the Cold War days where only the grim prospect of ‘mutually assured destruction’ kept the world safe. They have no relevance today and if we were to de-commission ours, perhaps we could encourage others to do likewise.

Instead, nuclear weapons are like the world leader equivalent of bringing a gun to school – it’s far too serious a weapon for any situation you might encounter, but since you’ve got one, others feel they threatened unless they get one too.

Though your points are all indeed true I felt that the reasons for spending in defense were overlooked.

For example though the UK defense budget is an astronomical amount of money, its acctually been the lowest since the 1930′s, We spend less than countries such as Greece, only 2.5% of our overall budget is on defense.

Our armed services are also understrength and stretched across every part of the globe, underpaid and with very poor support. A private makes less than a street cleaner, Troop numbers are down and men are dying because they dont have the right equipment

Lets not forget the other roles of armed forces, though as you say the military is primarily here for “death”, it also serves humanitarian causes such as disaster response and peacekeeping in areas such as Kosovo and Bosnia. Liberation in areas like afghanistan also allow opressed people a better way of life, women in Kabul can now attend schools and education, impossible under the taliban.

Finally in terms of your mention of the redvelopment of our nuclear weapons program, I feel that it is acctually a neccesity. With countries such as North Korea and Iran developing Nuclear programs we need to have up to date weaons to act as our shields preventing us from offensive action, it would not be wise to let our defense shield to fall out of date.