You know, defence spending wouldn’t be all that bad, if we could say use our Forces to build new rail, renewable energy, affordable “barracks/military grade” housing in walkable cities. Energy and infrastructure resiliency, owned by the people are important goals that would make us stronger against potential threats, invasions and the ability to ramp up production when needed to support our allies.
I know… civilian infrastrucutre spending doesn’t count toward it which is unfortunate, but training and salaries to military personnel to accomplish civilian aims do count, and anything that can be accounted separately as specifically for military uses does count.
It’s just that we know from Ukraine and the Black Sea (and nearly every war since WW2) that it’s not necessarily who spends the most on shooty-shooty-boom-boom equipment who wins. We have to support our allies, but at home we also have many problems within our nation to deal with. With some creative thinking we could try and hit two birds with one stone, strengthen our military capability by tasking our military personnel to assist in major civilian infrastructure projects, that would help us respond to threats from both nature and our adversaries.
