The United States maintains the most powerful military in human history

Yes I realize that the U.S. has a lot of advanced hardware, but the countries that rank behind them are not that far behind. I would not attribute the amount spent on better quality. The Fiscal Times reports that since 1996 $8.5 trillion of U.S. spending has been unaccounted for. How much of that money has been doled out recklessly such as spending $1billion on getting rid of ammo, $1billion on "nuts and bolts", and billions of other dollars on trumped up defense contractors who have or had connections in certain administrations. Either way you look at it the U.S. wastes a ton of money not directly tied to anything military but it is part of their defense budget so as far as money spent goes I would not trust the numbers there." The military gap is extremely massive. Number two in the world can be disputed between Russia and China. Russia has shown their own deficiencies during the South-Ossetia War, in which their equipment constantly broke down or malfunctioned. The US has never encountered such massive failure during its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The US does spend a lot of irrelevant funds, but when you compare the massive budget to the rest of the world, it shows the US has more to spend on weapon development, resources, and constant training. "Yes Germany was defeated and occupied but, could the U.S sustain a multi-front war with multiple superpowers as Germany tried. You mentioned "The Big Three" of old but what if Russia China and India tried taking a crack at the old U S of A. If the war was fought on U.S soil I do not believe that they would be able to succeed. Even if all of its citizens were to join the fight, out of "The New Big Three" comes roughly 1.1 billion fit to fight individuals from those countries, and all of their military hardware. Germany was not taken down by just one other country." Germany also had allies helping them during the war. Although Italy should be considered a minor participant as they never accomplished any major offensives, the Japanese were also extremely powerful, modernized, and made significant gains the Pacific. The countries you mentioned have a massive population, but individually those countries wouldn't stand a chance against the United States. If we are going to debate who could defeat the US with allies, I would be forced to bring NATO into the debate, which is not part of the original topic. In a war between just Nazi Germany and the British, it's likely they would have fought to a stalemate as the military gap was not that large. No country would be able to cross the ocean and invade the mainland US as they would have to pass our technologically superior and much larger Navy to bring their forces overseas. "The U.S essentially is running low on funds so to sustain any long large war economically with any other country would be a challenge itself. The U.S military today also has lack of experience in large scale war. The German military was full of seasoned experienced and highly trained soldiers. I know we have experienced soldiers but Iraq and Afghanistan is not all out war by any means. The U.S military standards have dropped extremely low to meet their recruiting numbers and they are not getting the type of people fit for service like they used to." I disagree. Although the US is in debt, most Western countries are. Japan currently has double our amount of debt (as a percentage of GDP) but they are operating just fine. The US still has $200 trillion worth of assets and is extremely wealthy. If California were to secede from the Union, it would be the 9th richest country on Earth. That is just one state. The wealth of the United States should not be questioned. At the same time, the US has the most combat experience out the all the top countries. China has never fought on the modern battlefield. Russia also has a conscripted military. Conscripted militaries generally suffer from poor morale, terrible training, and horrible living conditions. Conscript armies are now becoming extinct in favor of professional, volunteer militaries that the US leads the world in. Being a veteran, I am aware that the military has currently raised the standards for enlistment as they are in the process of downsizing. The US still has combat-hardened leadership training our new recruits. " The U.S is definitely mighty in the number of hardware and spending but that does not mean anything if it is lacking in large scale battlefield experience and the war is brought to its own shores for the first time since the Revolutionary War." There isn't a single country on Earth that has an active duty military who has fought in a large scale war. The US has been involved in a ground war since 2001. The US clearly has the most experience in armed conflict. An invasion of the US by a single country is implausible due to our naval capabilities.