The US needs to at least double the size of our armed forces. This provides two benefits.

First is the ability to fight two wars simultaneously. That was standard policy until the Clinton administration when the Pentagon invented the farce known as “1½ Wars.”

The second benefit of doubling the size of the Armed Forces and increasing the share of GDP devoted to defense is that doing so sucks resources away from the rest of government. At one time silly self indulgent entitlements were justified as exercises in self esteem. The immature indulging of special interest identities was accepted as a reward for the children of those who had suffered through the Great Deppression and WW-II.

The partisans of the left have always hated the military and sought to cut the resources devoted to it. Why? Their vision of a society after the Revolution is actually highly militarized in a Stalinist fashion and the military itself in America is no direct political threat since it submits to civilian authority. In fact the military is a functioning socialist community. The problem the left has with the military is that it uses resources that can not then go to deliberately unproductive activities such as public housing, socialized medicine and public education. The military also draws a cohort of young people out of civilian sector and denies the left the ability to use them for a period of time. If citizens leave the military more productive, patriotic and both suspicious of arbitrary authority yet devoted to voluntary cooperation, then the cause of the left is further weakened.