Indeed. To be more exact, US encouragements for higher spending are implicite calls to buy more US arms.

Keeping Europe in vassaldom is pretty much the accepted policy on both sides of the aisle. Top National Security Democrat Zbigniew Brzezinski, onetime National Security Adviser for President Carter put it this way:

"To put it in a terminology that harkens back to a more brutal age of ancient empires," he writes, "the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together."

There are still plenty of situations that require conventional military force.  For example, none of us wants to see China invade Taiwan, or North Korea attack South Korea, or Serbia attack Croatia.  NATO membership may be the only thing that protects the Baltic states from a future Russian government.  While I'm not familiar with the details of Falklands diplomacy, I think that in principle, the British were justified in using force to repel the Argentine invaders.  I also think that evacuating expats is a legitimate use of state power.

I am aware that the western countries have frequently used their militaries to set up right-wing military dictatorships around the world.  This practice has almost always backfired on us, and I hope that our leaders will eventually realize that it is futile.  (Not to mention hypocritical, un-democratic and just plain evil.)  Nevertheless, if dictatorship stays in our sphere of influence long enough, sometimes it can transform into a democracy; Taiwan and South Korea are prime examples.

I really don't know what to do about humanitarian crises like Sudan or Rwanda.  We have a moral imperative to help the weak, but I don't think we know how to do that sucessfully.  One of my friends spent 20 years in the military, and now he works for NGOs in crisis zones - he doesn't have any easy answers either.

So there are some of my thoughts on the uses of military power.  How much money should a democracy spend on these tasks?  I think 4% of GDP is too much, and 1% is too little, but every country has to decide that for themselves.

The only field where I'd favor more military spending is humanitarian interventions. But, apart from transport planes and a unified Euroforce (which are coming), what this would need most is not more spending and more weapons, but more training (to avoid civilian casualties, and to not rish long-term negative economic, social and political consequences with short-term force protection decisions) and much deeper policy pre-planning, and of course strong checks and balances to prevent the abuse of this power for other goals (economic, geopolitical, dominance). Possibly best done under a UN umbrella, the EU delegating power.

Only, by today, I am growing increasing doubts that this is realistically possible. That is, would politicians ever agree to something like this, or would be able to do sufficient policy pre-planning.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}