US military spending dropped by about half when you look at GDP between 1982 and 1999, so your statements about the Cold War ending not affecting spending is just straight up incorrect. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/mili...
US defense spending was 3.4% of GDP in 2019. Quite possibly it jumped in 2020 as GDP dropped, but over 4% seems unlikely. (Still, in the ballpark and good context, I think your comment added to the discussion.)
Compare that to GDP % which would indicate a steady decline in spending. So now we very much do have to examine GDP here in order to look at the argument specifics if we care about 1982-1990. With that said, the cold war ended around 1991, so the military stagnation is more or less in line with the cold war ending. The context missing on the original claim is simply that spending shot right back up once American mucked up and got itself stuck in the middle east, being involved in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
But hey, none of this relates to the original post at all really - that claim was not actually doing any lifting in the original argument other than to serve as a light illustration of how the military spending is never cut in a significant way, and that is generally true save a small exception from 2011-2015. The best that can happen is an effective slow cut through stagnation. And all of THAT is just to say that the government gets pushback when trying to walk back policies.
So did it ever really matter how the cold war affected spending here? What's the point of calling this super nuance out?
Again, I think you're missing the point. The very specific, non relevant way you interpreted the claim is factually wrong.
To me, the claim read as:
> the military spending is never cut in a significant way
Which again, at an absolute level, is generally true when looking at inflation adjusted spending. Within context, absolute is relevant here though as this is about government process. The whole context makes this claim incredibly tangential to the whole point, which more or less boils down to "government has a lot of inertia".
> doesn't change the fact the poster is wrong
Again, did it ever really matter how the cold war affected spending here? What's the point of calling this super nuance out? My point is not to argue about 1990-2000 military spending and the measures of it.
I'm calling this out to say "arguing over small irrelevant details to an argument is not very productive if you care about the real topic at hand".
Are you trying to make this case because you believe that the government does not have a lot of inertia when it comes to these things? Great, then make that case instead of this rabbit hole. Or is this rabbit hole just about the non relevant fact itself?