UCSD Young Americans for Liberty

Angelica Malik
Director of Discourse
UCSD Young Americans for Liberty

The American defense budget is staggering at five percent of its GDP. While America’s defense budget increases year by year, European states continue cutting their military spending to drastically low numbers. Most European nations have defense budgets that fall around one percent of their total GDP and continue to shrink. In fact the U.S. spends more on defense then roughly the entire world combined. This massive spending on military is not just giving the U.S. the strength to dominate the world, as an unintended result it is also creating an incentive for European welfare states to stay afloat. Europe relies on NATO or more accurately the U.S. military for defense against a hypothetical attack, as well as the billions spent by the U.S. on a nuclear arsenal which keeps Europe under the American umbrella of deterrence. Because most European states essentially have no military, in turn they can defer more of their budget to subsidizing social welfare programs. America needs to stop allowing Europe to piggy-back off of the American taxpayer. The same tax-payer I might add that is constantly ridiculed and disparaged by socialist Europeans who hate the free market and capitalism. Europe calls the U.S. uncivilized and yet the U.S. affords them the ability to practice socialism. How ironic is that?