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Chapter 1586: Using the Military to Promote Science (Second Update, Please Subscribe)

Military expenses!

It is an expense related to survival and is indispensable at all times.

Although the Cold War is cold, it can turn hot at any time. With both sides pointing swords at each other, military spending has become a key factor in preventing the outbreak of war.

In order to prevent the Cold War from turning into a hot war, countries have always spared no effort in spending on weapons and equipment development and armaments.

Especially after the Berlin Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the atmosphere of war preparedness among countries has become even stronger.

As the 1960s approached, European countries finally rose from the ruins. Not only did their economies fully recover, but they also made great progress. They no longer had to tighten their belts as in the past.

But on the other hand, the survival pressure from the Soviet bloc forced Western European countries to continuously increase their military spending. Although the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in America, it made Western European countries realize that the United States was willing to sacrifice the interests of its European allies for its own security - with a war as the gamble.

"... In this situation, Western European countries are seeking to ease tensions with Russia while increasing their military spending. Before the crisis, NATO countries' military spending was generally above 4% of their GDP. After the crisis, in order to strengthen their armaments and get rid of their dependence on the United States, their military spending generally exceeded 5%."

After mentioning Europe's increased military spending to get rid of the United States, Li Yian's heart was filled with emotion. The vision of European politicians now far exceeds that of those politicians after the Cold War.

What are European countries like after the Cold War?

The collapse of the Soviet Union during the Cold War made European politicians naively believe that the enemy had disappeared, so they began to think about leaving the enemy behind.

The existence of NATO has given the EU a bottom line for disarmament. Relying on the NATO mechanism, the United States not only provides a nuclear umbrella for the EU, but also deploys a large number of troops in the EU, relying on the principle of collective defense to deter Russia.

In order to reduce military spending as much as possible, Western European countries began a self-disarmament campaign - the military forces built up during the Cold War were self-castrated, tanks became scrap metal, and planes were thrown into the garbage dump. The proportion of military spending in European countries to GDP was reduced from about 5% during the Cold War to about 1% in less than a decade.

Because military spending has been reduced again and again, the military has become "existential". For example, West Germany, at the end of the Cold War, had the largest armored force in Western Europe - more than 10,000 tanks and armored vehicles of various types. When the two Germanys were unified, they only received more than 10,000 tanks and armored vehicles from East Germany. Almost overnight, Germany became the world's second most powerful armored country.

By the new century, there were only a few hundred left, and half of them were sealed.

It is rare in the world for Ma Fangnanshan to do this.

Later, some people said that Western European countries were able to implement welfare programs because of the Soviet Union. This is complete nonsense.

Because during the Cold War, military spending did squeeze out welfare spending, and the middle and lower classes in Europe and the United States did not live a very happy life during the Cold War. On the contrary, after the end of the Cold War, white left politicians continued to cut military spending in order to win people's hearts and minds, turning military spending into welfare spending.

As for defense issues, we have the United States and NATO!
The world is peaceful now, what's the point of having an army?

In those people's dreams, they even want to abolish the army completely.

After all, the world is peaceful, and after all, the Americans are there to support us.

This is also the reason why some Americans later said that we cannot allow Europeans to continue to take advantage.

Feeling deeply about the naivety of the white left, Li Yian mentioned SEA’s military spending:
"Our military spending has also increased by about 4.5 percent to 4 percent over the same period, and this spending will continue. After all, safety is the top priority. However, due to the rapid economic growth, the actual level of our military spending has always been below percent."

This is the most amazing thing. Since the brainwave flew to Chang'an and asked SEA to assume more defense responsibilities, the military budget has increased massively.

However, the annual military budget is far inferior to economic development.

Often the 4% of the budget is calculated based on the GDP proportion of that year, but the rapid economic development in the following year led to rapid GDP growth, and the original 4% was directly reduced to 3.4%.

"Your Excellency, it is extremely necessary to appropriately increase military spending while ensuring fiscal health."

The answer came from Franz, the special director of the Ministry of Finance. Li Yian nodded and asked,
"So increasing military spending won't cause financial pressure?"

"It depends on what you intend to increase military spending on."

Franz, who came from the German Ministry of Finance, was responsible for raising war funds during the war. In the past twenty years, as a senior official of the Ministry of Finance, he has been responsible for raising construction funds. It can be said that he has made great contributions. It is for this reason that he was promoted from executive director of the Ministry of Finance to director four years ago.

Franz asked uncertainly.

"Increase military spending to 5% next year?"

“What is our GDP this year?”

"It is expected to be more than 3800 billion yuan, or 1500 billion U.S. dollars. If it is at the 5% level, it will be 75 billion U.S. dollars."

1500 billion dollars!
Is this GDP a lot?
not much!

According to statistics, the GDP of the United States this year is 7400 billion US dollars, while that of Germany is 1300 billion US dollars, and that of the United Kingdom is just over 1000 billion US dollars.

As for the Soviet Union, although there is no official GDP data, according to Western estimates, it is between 2600 billion and 3000 billion US dollars.

So in terms of GDP, after twenty years of development and construction, SEA's GDP has reached one-fifth of that of the United States and one-half of that of the Soviet Union, firmly ranking third.

But this is just economics. "Our economy is half of the Soviet Union's, but our military strength is far behind them. Of course, I have never considered competing with them in military strength."

Li Yian shrugged and said:
"Compared to the competition in military scale, I prefer the competition in military technology. We need to increase military spending, otherwise science will not have strong support and cannot develop rapidly. SEA is a 1500 billion US dollar economy, and military spending has been maintained at to billion US dollars, which is obviously not appropriate."

After thinking for a while, Li Yian said again.

"The military has always been responsible for many R&D tasks in the field of science and technology. To maintain its current leading position in the high-tech field, it must increase investment, which will help improve the overall level of science and technology. Therefore, increasing military spending is an inevitable option. After all, there are many scientific research projects that can only be carried out with the support of the military."

In fact, this is the fundamental reason why human technology was able to develop rapidly during the Cold War, because companies need to make profits. Although companies will conduct many forward-looking research, the forward-looking research they conduct is all that has development potential and is feasible.

Compared with enterprises, the forward-looking research conducted by the military is more exploratory. The purpose of their research is not to make sure that it is feasible, but to prove through research that it is not feasible.

Although the difference between them is not big, it actually costs money to prove that it is not feasible through research. However, verbal proof of its impracticability is cheaper.

In scientific research, verbal arguments alone may not necessarily lead to correct results. Sometimes actual trial and error are needed to obtain the correct results.

Failure in scientific research is often not necessarily a failure. After all, failed research can also yield certain gains.

Just like the "Star Wars Project", among the thousands of studies conducted, more than 80% of the projects seemed unfeasible at the time, and less than 20% of the projects were feasible.

But the most amazing thing is that those 80% impossible projects have been continuously proven to be feasible in the following forty years, and many large American companies have successively obtained patents or research transfers from the military. Those research that seemed like science fiction have been further developed in enterprises, promoting research and development in related fields.

The military's research, which spared no expense, also profoundly changed the scientific way of thinking. In the implementation process, facing the military's requirements, scientists and engineers faced unprecedented technical challenges, which prompted them to constantly innovate their thinking and try new methods and technologies. This not only promoted the rapid progress in the field of science and technology, but also brought positive impacts to the development of other disciplines.

However, this virtuous cycle was seriously affected with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, because without the sense of crisis brought about by survival, human innovation and imagination will be subject to certain restrictions.

Looking back at the two scientific explosions that had the most profound impact on humanity, one was World War II and the other was the Cold War.

As for the post-Cold War and the new century, to some extent, it was just rehashing the leftovers of the Cold War. It was not until the dawn of artificial intelligence in the 20s that something new came into being. But the problem is that artificial intelligence was also one of the key research projects of the US and Soviet militaries during the Cold War.

So, it’s still... rehashing old stuff!

From the perspective of human scientific development, the Cold War was definitely the peak of human scientific development. Under the pressure of the survival crisis, humans fully exerted their imagination and creativity.

As for other military competitions, national prestige competitions, etc., Li Yian had no interest in participating at all.

Arms race? Does it make sense?
The Soviets produced more than 4 nuclear warheads, and at their peak, they had 5.5 tanks alone, nearly 10 armored vehicles of various types, more than 1 fighter jets in service, and more than 550 million troops operating these advanced combat weapons.

At that time, when the Soviet army's boots sounded on Moscow's Red Square, the whole world trembled. When the American soldiers saw them, they trembled and envied them.

But then?
The red flag fell and the Soviet Union collapsed.

The mighty army was gone without firing a single shot. The huge army prepared for the world war was gone forever.

This is the result of the military competition.

Compared with a military competition, Li Yian prefers a technological competition.

"science and technology!"

Li Yian lit a cigar, then looked at Franz and said:
"The development of science and technology is inseparable from a lot of cutting-edge research, and the military is the unit that is most sensitive to new technologies. With sufficient military funds, they can conduct more research and support more research projects. After all, our military construction direction has always been high-tech."

Nodding slightly, Li Yian said in a more serious tone:

"Yes, that is our development direction. Next we will implement a more massive development plan, which also means we need to further increase military spending."

That larger development plan, of course, refers to the Star Wars plan.

Unlike the moon landing program, the Star Wars program is a 20-year program. The entire research program covers not only military matters, but also many other areas of research, some of which were packaged in by Li Yian.

For example, mobile communications, artificial intelligence, sensors, data links, the Internet and other such projects. In fact, in another world, these subsystems are all derived from the research conducted in the Star Wars program.

However, in the Star Wars program, the research on these subsystems does not occupy any position, but the role they play in the development of economy and technology is far beyond people's imagination.

According to Li Yian's estimation, if everything goes well, by the time the entire plan is completed, it will basically be the era of early smartphones. Li Yian is not sure whether there will be Android at that time, but there will definitely be mobile phones like Symbian and 3G networks.

"so what……"

Looking at Franz, Li Yian asked.

"80 billion dollars, what do you think? Are there financial pressures?"

(End of this chapter)