Back during the cold war our own militarism was easily justified by the strength of Eastern bloc forces- you know, using actual numbers. Now that the numbers can't justify it our militarists skirt right around them. Other than Russia itself the Eastern bloc mostly switched sides & joined Nato.
The military capabilities of Russia are, in a relative sense, greatly reduced as compared to a modern Nato.
The whole alliance could likely spend less & remain secure.
The problem is that it is not so much
quantity of military resources, but
quality.
We want our (NATO/West) jet fighters, ships, tanks etc, to take on the latest Russian/Chinese/etc equivalents.
If we were still using stuff like that from the 1960's (with some notable exceptions, where the stuff was so good, especially US ones, that they may be competitive in some respects even today), and Russia/China/Etc had continued their modernization progress, at the same rate.
If a major skirmish or war broke out. We could find that everything at our disposal (from the 1960's) would just be blown up and lose, because it would be out gunned by modern technology.
It costs an absolute fortune to develop the latest jet fighters (and other military stuff). But we have to carry on this fast paced development, if we want to remain having what are (hopefully), the latest and greatest military gear on the planet.
There are even major new weapon types, which are probably going to be of considerable importance in the near future (if not now), which did not even exist, twenty or thirty years ago.
A good example of this, would be drone technology, which is of increasing importance.
Trump (or whoever wins the elections), could
freeze military development/advancement spending. But that could lead to the US being somewhat weakly defended (despite what Trump seems to be saying), in the coming future.
Unlike Russia, China spends
huge amounts of money on new weapons and stuff. It is rumored that they spend a lot more, than is publicly released.
One thing to take note from the second world war, was that because Germany had lost most of its military equipment during world war 1, and because they are a relatively rich and highly industrial/innovative and hard working, country.
They were to develop an amazingly powerful array of weapons, which were problematic for the allied forces. E.g. American tanks were inferior, so they could hit the German tanks, but the shells would just bounce off, without doing any real damage. The armor was so good/solid. Yet the German tanks could still blow up the US tanks, which were (sadly) inferior.
The German weapons were so good, other countries, especially the US and Russia, used them as the basis of modern weapons, still coming out today.
E.g. Cruise missiles (were based on V1 and V2's), Landing on the Moon was German rocket technology based (nicely improved by the US though), Jets were invented in Germany (and the UK).
Even the modern type of submarines originally came from German second world war ones. One or more modern bomb types, was originally invented in Germany (WW2), e.g. Cluster bombs.
tl;dr
NATO (and the West), does
not want to be taken by surprise, if any significant battle occurs in the future between Russian and/or Chinese modern weapon systems.
I.e. Unfortunately to attempt to stay in the front (of weapon development) is going to be extremely expensive.
Alternatively learn to speak Mandarin, Russian and maybe some Arabic languages for good measure.