Is it time for the United States to bring its armies home?

[Mihalik]

What allies and friends, outside of Israel and Saudi-Arabian? Everybody hates america and everybody would be happy to nuke it into oblivion.

Not sure if serious.

The Saudis hate living shit out of the US. They just learned how to play the US like a fiddle.

They are the source of Salafist fundamentalism (aka the ideology behind Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram and pretty much every other Islamic terror group that hates the West) and have funded every single Sunni terrorist organization, Salafist cleric and terror support group ever, except Hamas and Hezbollah, neither of which attacked the West in at least 2 decades, having realized they can just play the "freedom fighter" card if they focus on Israel.

Europeans like the US (they went to for US repeatedly in the past almost 3 decades), they just hate the retardation of the GOP. Don't conflate the GOP with America.

[misterpuk]

I'd say most, but not all - unless the hosting country wants to pay us a profit to stay.

[Easo]

No.
However, seems that the Trump still keeps thinking that politics is exactly the same as business and that loosing the global influence and alliances gathered over a century in a few years (!!!) is totally OK.

[Guy4123]

Someone has to be the big boss of the world if you want to live in a relatively peaceful society. Someone has to, militarily, control and guarantee the flow of trade through the oceans and keep nations aspiring for the good ol days of invade and conquer in check.

Currently you really only have one option, and that's America with the EU. In the future China will probably be a player in this scenario but would you really want China having the kind of global dominance the USA currently has?

[Stormspellz]

Yes and no.

The nature of US military presence abroad is often sorely misunderstood.

US forces in Europe are not protecting Europe. They are protecting American interests, and really they aren't even doing that in Europe but rather primarily exist to support US operations in the Middle East and North Africa.

Most US bases globally exist to provide the United States with the infrastructure for global power projection that goes beyond a nuclear deterrent. Shuttering that infrastructure would be the single dumbest act committed in human history and would reduce the United States from a global power, the only global power, to a regional power, abandoning much of the US naval, air and ground capabilities.

That infrastructure is valuable and worth preserving.

On the other hand, certain military deployments are simply absurd wastes of resources at this point, namely Afghanistan. An unwinnable and pointless engagement that has been ongoing for nearly 18 years now. At some point one just has to cut its loses and step away.

Believe Afghanistan presence is mostly because of Pakistan in the current day, keep a very close eye (and arms) to what is best described as a hostile ally with nukes.

[Bakis]

If US want to get rid of their global influnce still remaining at get sidelined by China and perhaps in the long run Russia.
Sure go home?

[cubby]

No. Why would we do that now?

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Yes. They really need to stop meddling with other countries and quit thinking of themselves as the police for the planet. Theyre not gods gift to everything as most of them delude themselves into thinking they are.

Would you rather China do it?

[Theodarzna]

Yes. Disband NATO and dismantle the military industrial complex and no more wars for Israel's sake would be fantastic.

[Venant]

There seem to be a lot of threads like this of late:

Dumb redneck: We should take our army home! Take that world.

World : Yeah, fuck off then.

Dumb redneck: WE SHOWED YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In your view, who are the 48% that have voted against demilitarization?

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Yes. Disband NATO and dismantle the military industrial complex and no more wars for Israel's sake would be fantastic.

But can you explain to us why Israel is so damn influential in American politics that we seem to have built this entire system to serve its interests.

[Tiwack]

But can you explain to us why Israel is so damn influential in American politics that we seem to have built this entire system to serve its interests.

The thing they have in common is that they both want religion where it doesn't belong: government. Aside from the strong intelligence-coop and US tax money sent to Israel with the clause to spend it on US goods - which ends up being mostly arms. There's a lot of history making them a close US ally. Note: Military-industrial complex, network of individuals and institutions involved in the production of weapons and military technologies. The military-industrial complex in a country typically attempts to marshal political support for continued or increased military spending by the national government. It needs Israel as much as Israel needs it which is why evangelicals are persuaded to keep it alive.

[Ozzyorcborne]

No. Why would we do that now?

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Would you rather China do it?

Ok ill bite. Why would China do it?

[Thekri]

Yes. Disband NATO and dismantle the military industrial complex and no more wars for Israel's sake would be fantastic.

Because power vacuums are awesome and most certainly in everyone's best interests. There are definitely no powerful and opportunistic nations that would take advantage of that situation.

[ShimmerSwirl]

What the US has with their global military presence is leverage. The US Navy is what allows global trade to be an actual thing rather than the fantasy it was from the beginning of history until WW2. Trump can afford to be the bombastic antagonist he is because he and everyone else knows full well that the entirety of global trade and the hundreds of economies that depend on it are enabled by the global power of the US military.

Other countries have gotten a free ride on the backs of the US military since WW2, allowing them to trade their way to prosperity. If the US decides to stop patrolling the worlds oceans, trade as we know it today is a thing of the past. The funny part is that the rest of the world benefits from this US global power system far more than the US itself does. And that there is the essence of Trump's current tirade against everyone. He is forcing the world to acknowledge what the US military is doing for their ability to conduct trade, and asking them to start paying up for this benefit they have been enjoying.

So, no the US should not remove its global presence, although it should use the threat of doing so to extract concessions from other countries.

[Realitytrembles]

Careful not to cut yourself on all that edge. 2edgyforme.

The reality is that if the world goes down the gutter the US goes with it. The US is still on the same planet as the rest of the world. Large world wars tend to be more contagious than the fucking plague, as we already learned twice. Plus now we live in a time when even a half starving shithole of a country the size of fucking Jersey can build nukes and ICBMs.

The nuclear deterrent works two ways. Either no one else has nukes or if we do use nukes we all use nukes and die together.

Your imaginary edgelord world would either turn into a shithole or new structures would arise where countries like China run the world.

Edgelord...a bloodless insult. I'm not trying to be edgy.

The deal would be simple: leave us alone in the Americas, and we don't give a sht what you do on the other side of the world.

Poke us at home? Everybody loses everything.

[Thekri]

Edgelord...a bloodless insult. I'm not trying to be edgy.

The deal would be simple: leave us alone in the Americas, and we don't give a sht what you do on the other side of the world.

Poke us at home? Everybody loses everything.

Why not guys! It worked great in the 1930s!

[candle86]

nah, just refocus them to our actual interests, Europe is no longer that interesting, and quite frankly Europe needs to be responsible for its own defense, the simple fact we are there acts as a deterrent. What we need is to open a naval base and airbase in Isreal for force projection in the middle east while also adding weight behind the threat that if you screw with isreal we might just make your people revert to the stone age.

[Realitytrembles]

Why not guys! It worked great in the 1930s!

What didn't we have in the 30s that we have now? Hint. starts with an N

Whats wrong with wanting to be left the f alone, and in return we do the same?

F this ungrateful , whining , complaining world. No longer do they deserve 1 single drop of American blood . Not one.

A wall of nuclear threat girding the Americas, and we watch while everyone else tears themselves apart.

[Thekri]

What didn't we have in the 30s that we have now? Hint. starts with an N

Whats wrong with wanting to be left the f alone, and in return we do the same?

F this ungrateful , whining , complaining world. No longer do they deserve 1 single drop of American blood . Not one.

A wall of nuclear threat girding the Americas, and we watch while everyone else tears themselves apart.

You know what the world had in the 1930s that it still has now? Assholes.

Your plan has a lot in common with the theory of communism. It sounds like it would work extremely well, unless you have some basic idea of how humanity functions, and then the plan looks insane.

[Gestopft]

Why should the citizenry of the US care about being a 'global power'? It is extremely obvious in the case of other countries that it is only the oligarchs or a few powerful special interests that benefit from such an arrangement, yet in the United States we attempt to indoctrinate everyone into believing that this is actually good for the people.

I think that people would be better off with their government paying everyone's medical bills, instead of paying to occupy foreign countries.

This actually hits nicely on one of my issues: the US military defends our interests worldwide because it is part of maintaining our status as the richest country in the world- the big problem, and why I think so many people are starting to take issue with this is that it's really just a small sliver of people benefitting from this. If we took our prosperity, and actually did what other developed nations do with their wealth- healthcare coverage, free universities, paid leave and vacation guarantees, better wage and labor laws, etc. If the American people writ large felt the prosperity that global interests brings, there would, I think, be more of a sense that this is a model worth defending.

[cubby]

Ok ill bite. Why would China do it?

Really? Why would a country thirsting for world power move in to a vacuum left by the United States' withdrawing? Because they want to. And because they can. China created an island in order to project more power and influence.