cjm,
Let us be real. The United States can afford to increase our Armed Forces by 15% per annum each year for a period of 4 years. That would nearly double our active duty armed forces to a nearly million man army and another million and a quarter divided between the Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. That is not an unreasonably large force for a population the size of the united Sates to sustain. National wealth spent on the military is now at an unusually low level of about 3.7% of GDP. Most people do not realize that the size of the armed forces and the expenditures on the armed forces have not risen much during this war. In fact the size and cost of the armed forces as a percentage of the nations capacity are now almost half what they were 20 years ago and about a third of what they were during Vietnam. We can easily afford to increase military spending to 7% of GDP. This is sufficient to give us the mix of heavy and flexible forces needed and the ability to deal with multiple emergent threats in a complex and dangerous world.