Quote Originally Posted by Entropy View Post
Except we still have our Cold War defensive alliances. As long as we're obligated to defend allies around the world, then we'll need the capability to project power and deploy combat forces to those areas. That's not cheap.
Read the treaties. The North Atlantic Treaty for one does not mandate a specific military strength. In fact, it doesn't even mandate a specific reaction to an invasion. There's a lot of latitude involved (The Lisbon treaty is on paper a much stricter alliance, but almost nobody knows about this function!).