>>54680171I dont know about USA, but I can tell you about situation in czechia, and I would say its fairly similar in the rest of EU.
After elections, rarely has one party total majority, so it makes a coalition with some other parties. Then they start haggling over different ministries, arguing who will get what. the main party often keeps to themselves more important things as finance, and nobody gives a fuck about defense, so they give it to some irrelevant party so they can feel like they actually got something from the coalition. Other times weaker coalition partners get some more important ministry, so the main coalition party keeps defense to themselves, so they have bigger amount of ministries in total.
what Im trying to say is that ministry of defense is just a paperweight in political power struggle. And very light paperweight to say the least. Nobody gives a fuck about it, nobody wants it too much, but they will take it for free if they can have it. We have already had some women as defense ministers, now we have an actor.
Last time actual generals were defense ministers was during communism. Since then army is just corruption ridden black hole for money. Generals steal money and soldiers then must buy uniforms from their own salary because army cant afford new ones.
Not too long ago, one of our generals (who is now chairman of the NATO military committee) said that in case of war, our army has 2 weeks worth of supplies.
