Making military costs be zero?

how do you make the military costs (defensive, offensive, strategic) be zero?

please step by step instructions, much appreciation for your help

help?

The answer is that it will never be zero. You will always have some number of military personnel that are needed for the bases and airports that you are required to have. Those are the defensive airport and base as well as the offensive airport and base.

You can get close if you tear down everything else, ex. all forts etc., and have no weapons. Further, you can reduce it more be lowering government salaries.

ive noticed countries on the downloadable data spreadsheets that do not have any army... havnt investigated it... probably just a bug

I believe there was an update a while back that allowed military costs to be completely eliminated. Previously, you weren't able to remove the last base, but now you are...but as Aries says it requires that you have absolutely no forts or weapons left. I believe you have to destroy them.

every time i dismantle all military units, next month i check and they are still there, eating up my cash

i have destroy weapons, ammos, and bases for 3 countries, but they still have military expenses every month.

for my last country i've took over, no matter what i do i still have over 70k people in the military

Have you checked your cities for garrisons?