Canada

You can't convince other countries to form a military alliance with your country unless it has a half decent military. France isn't going to agree to protect our country unless we can convince them we can protect theirs. In an ideal word, nobody would spend on defence but we don't live in that world. Some amount of defence spending is unfortunately required. At least it sometimes does lead to societal improvements like GPS.

I also don't believe the idea that the US can just instantly win a war. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq held their own. Russia thought they'd take over Ukraine in 3 days and it's been 3 years and counting. These super powers like to claim they could take on the entire planet and win but then get embarrassed by a bunch of farmers.

I don't get the argument here... Countries should just be nuking each other all the time because it's not that bad? The US should have just dropped some nukes on Iraq and it would have been better?

Nukes kill children. Nukes destroy hospitals. Nukes give whole body third degree burns to everyone who isn't immediately obliterated. Nukes irradiate the land and sky so much that we can date paintings based on the presence of isotopes spread by nukes in the ink. Nuclear warfare is a war against humanity.