A possible alternate reality

The news today was talking about rebalancing our budget to have less military and more diplomatic efforts. That raised the question...
How many diplomats can we buy for half of the military budget?

Google to the rescue...
Half the US military budget is more than 250 billion dollars.
We want our new diplomats to be effective, so we will give each one a $5 million dollar annual budget. That works out to 50,000 new diplomats and their teams.
There are 195 countries in the world.
That is 256 new diplomat offices in each country in the world.

That is a lot of well connected persuasive people spending 1.28 billion dollars in each country.
If they are active, dedicated and hard working, I bet they could have a heck of an effect on our relationship with each country.

Our half sized military would still be the largest in the world by a huge margin, but it wouldn't have much to do.

Anchor

Without the anchor that holds the string, the kite can't fly.

Culture is such an anchor.
Technology is another.
They are some of the things we love to hate because they are so coercive and demanding. They are also the wind beneath our wings; foundations upon which we build better, smarter, more interesting lives.