Your message is insane.  I don't even know where to start.  Why would we prefer to have nuclear weapons as a deterrent instead of having a conventional military as a deterrent?  Which is more favorable, defending one of our allies by deploying nuclear weapons, or defending them by deploying a few ten thousand soldiers, planes, and warships?  Why would we want to put money into weapons we can never use without tremendous backlash and moral misgivings, instead of ones we deploy regularly to serve our interests?<p>The current U.S. defense force size <i>doesn't</i> need to be maintained; we haven't used a significant portion of it to defend us or our direct allies from a military attack since World War II.  We use our military proactively, as a tool for enacting our will.  We cannot hammer a nail if our only tool is a bulldozer.