I really don't like measuring muscle strength with money.
What if the US is not very efficient with their defence spending? In Ukraine, we found out that the US made shells cost 10x more than the Russian ones and do more-less the same. How many drones Chinese can build at the cost of just one US Aircraft Carrier? How much of the cost of the US defence is actually firepower and how much of it is salaries and operating costs of all the bases all over the world?
There's this idea that Trump was elected to dismantle US from its current world order. America did not step in against Russia to fulfill its guarantees to Ukraine, even before Biden and Trump Obama folded when US was challenged in Syria. They only fulfilled their obligations to Israel and that's against orders of magnitude weaker forces. Trump is also known for threatening his allies with not upholding the US obligations unless something extra is given to him.
US removes its presence from the world and deals with internal issues instead, China takes over as the high-tech world order enforcer and Europe goes into soul searching.
What if the US is not very efficient with their defence spending? In Ukraine, we found out that the US made shells cost 10x more than the Russian ones and do more-less the same. How many drones Chinese can build at the cost of just one US Aircraft Carrier? How much of the cost of the US defence is actually firepower and how much of it is salaries and operating costs of all the bases all over the world?
There's this idea that Trump was elected to dismantle US from its current world order. America did not step in against Russia to fulfill its guarantees to Ukraine, even before Biden and Trump Obama folded when US was challenged in Syria. They only fulfilled their obligations to Israel and that's against orders of magnitude weaker forces. Trump is also known for threatening his allies with not upholding the US obligations unless something extra is given to him.
US removes its presence from the world and deals with internal issues instead, China takes over as the high-tech world order enforcer and Europe goes into soul searching.