Fundamentals

In 2011 the United States spent 20 percent of the federal budget on defense. All told, the U.S. government spent about $718 billion on defense and international security assistance in 2011, more than it spent on Medicare. As of 31 December 2013, there were 1,369,532 people on active duty in the armed forces, with an additional 850,880 people in the seven reserve components.

The United States and Europe have a long history of war in the 20th century, and the 21st century has already seen its fair share of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror. The West now has the most technologically advanced military machine, with laser-guided bombs, satellites which can read the headline from a newspaper on the street, and drones which can discretely approach a target undetected and have it destroyed by an operator pressing a button thousands of miles away. The irony is that with all this power, the terrorists continue to grow their numbers because they have no country that can be attacked, and because every innocent civilian killed by a drone because poor intelligence information led to the wrong target, ensures that more and more new recruits are added to the ranks of terrorist organizations, and so the cycle continues.

There is no military at all in Nutopia because all citizens of the world share the same natural resources, and there are no countries or regions fighting over land, and there are no religious conflicts, and all people have the same quality of life, so no resources or labor are needed to support a military force.