NATO alliance defeated the Soviet Union led Warsaw pact without ever firing a shot on the battlefield. The stronger western economies essentially allowed the United States to finance an arms race with the Soviets that drove the eastern bloc into bankruptcy. Because the excessive spending on the military starved the populace of economic advancement, the political system in the east eventually collapsed under its own weight. Victory came at the expense of fulfilling President Dwight Eisenhower's worst nightmare upon his retirement of an overly powerful military-industrial complex.Unfortunately following an all-too brief respite in the 1990s, military spending in the United States took off again following the turn of the century to the degree that even without counting the insane cost of all the wars that we are fighting right now, the US is spending more on its military in inflation adjusted dollars than at any time since the second world war.As of 2011, the US accounts for 47% of the entire planet's military spending, meaning that we just about spend more than the rest of the world combined. We spend 8 times more than China. It is this profligate spending on expensive weapons systems we don't really need (like the F35 and new aircraft carriers) plus huge outlays to contractors that no one either side seems willing to touch, that is driving this country into insolvency. Only a group of middle eastern countries including Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq, UAE and others spend a larger percentage of GDP on the military. Tax cuts and slashing the social safety net will not fix what ails the United States. We need to end these wars now and slash the military.

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War Room: Will military spending bankrupt the U.S.?
Our debt problems stem from the fact that we're pouring more money into the Pentagon than we have since WWII

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