That's not an answer, it's an evasion. If you really believe that every single country in the world is ready to attack the US, and/or our interests abroad, then lets start with your best example: Which country do you consider to be the most likely to attack the US with conventional military forces?
The fact that China won't invade the US, therefore we ought to disband the military is simplistic and lacks strategic thought.
The biggest threats coming from China are industrial espionage (stealing trade secrets) and cyberwarfare, having the largest conventional military, and the largest stockpile of nukes, does absolutely nothing to combat or deter those threats.
We are already battling with China over influence in resource rich areas,
Our military is engaged in armed conflict with China?
and with Russia over pipeline access etc that plays a major role economically and in terms of security.
Our military is engaged in armed conflict with Russia?
Plus, cutting off Chinese imports hurts the American consumer just as much as it hurts the Chinese. How many Americans are going to sit around thinking it is oh so great to pay triple what they were used to for products at Wal-Mart? You don't think that will impact the US economy?
That's the Economic form of MAD that results from having a global economy. You spoke about deterrents, economic collapse is a huge deterrent.
Plus, if we just void all our debts with China over some dispute, how many nations do you suppose are going to line up to buy our debt? Zero.
Some dispute? I'm talking about a military attack on the US. Any nation that holds our debt should know without asking the question that if they invade our country, whatever debt we owe them will be considered null and void. The only countries who would be deterred from purchasing our debt after such an event, are those that plan to attack America.
Ha, tell that to Europe and parts of Asia where Russia is making huge plays to control the flow of natural gas into Europe and basically dominate Europe with threats of cutting the flow off...something we have ALREADY seen happen.
That's Europe and Asia, not America. Let the them fight their own battles, with their own money and their own soldiers.
That is just wishful thinking. We signed the NNPT decades ago with the hope that it would cause nations to ultimately give up their nuclear arms...that has been a total failure at this point in my opinion, what makes it somehow different with conventional forces?
We've had nuclear capability for the better part of a century and we've only ever used two, TWO! We've built THOUSANDS in that time! During that same span of time we have actually used our military for armed conflict in just about every corner of the globe. So that in itself makes it a bad comparison.
But let's say you're right, lets say that eliminating our military would be entirely unilateral, no other nations would follow suit... We'd still have over 500,000 men and women in the National Guard and Coast Guard combined, entirely sufficient to patrol our EEZ's and protect American soil from foreign threats. Meanwhile, we'd save hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
And just how long do you believe America will remain in our position as lone super power with the greatest military on earth? You should consider the fact that our mandatory spending is increasing every year and there is absolutely nothing that would indicate this trend will halt, much less be reversed.
Increases in mandatory spending come at the expense of discretionary spending, and our entire military budget is paid for out of discretionary spending, so the cuts are going to happen eventually whether we like it or not. By phasing out and disbanding the military, we will be doing what's already inevitable by choice, rather than out of necessity. If we wait till it's too late and have to disband the military out of fiscal necessity, we are going to go down in the history books as having gone the way of the Roman and Soviet empires.
