You make it sound like an act of altruism rather than the self interest it plainly is.
Why can’t it be both? Why can’t the pretection that the American military provides support both itself and its allies?
If you defend you and your wife from a mugger, does that make you a selfish person?
A capitalism-based empire doesn’t rely on occupation as such, just a meaningful presence - it reassures Wall Street and removes any ambiguity from the minds of other empire building nations.
What other kind of interest is there besides self-interest? 
If I don’t take care of myself/self-interest, how can I take care of those I care about?
(expanding circle: myself, family, loves, friends, city/state/country/world)
Well, that’s another debate . . . Thing is, in the previous age of colonial imperialism, the common people of Britain, France, etc., got some personal economic benefit out of their country’s having an empire, even if it was just a good manufacturing job that existed because the colony was a captive market for the manufactured goods. (The upper classes always got much more out of the arrangement, of course.) But in America today, it’s hard to see what economic return the average American is getting out of the American military hegemony he funds with his taxes. We’re protecting our economic competitors, in many cases. And it’s the average American, not the average Taiwanese or South Korean, who pays those taxes. So from the average American’s p.o.v. it really does look like altruism.
Sure mate, I know a thing or two about European politics. Its my daily exposure as such. Do you just object blindly to points of view you don’t like or is there some other Lefty angle going on?
Yep, the original post-Marshall Plan dynamic has altered significantly - the biggest shift being, of course, the demise of communism.
The determining factor for a US presence now is the strategic relevance of the host country, ‘strategic’ now usually meaning natural resources.
Well, your quote and reply was to me. And I would note there is a fair bloody number of non-Americans on the board.
[quote=“Sam_Stone, post:60, topic:508032”]
I think some of the people in this thread have a very simplistic, almost cartoonish view of how countries deal with each other.
[quote]
Quite so.
Agreed, and skipping to a quibble:
I believe that rather more fairly, Saddam convinced himself that the US had given a wink and a nudge regarding Kuwait.
Well mate, on the other hand there are heavy costs to the US for maintaining its present enormous war machine. There is a wee difference between stepping back a bit to save current dollars and ‘disarming.’ (And I think the US would have been daft post WWI to have maintained a full out war machine on the odd chance of another European adventure. Really daft.
That’s a pretty narrow reading of strategic. The US has a strategic interest in having air bases in Central Asia to support and re-supply troops in Afghanistan, not because there are any crucial natural resources in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, etc. The US has a strategic interest in East Asia, namely Korea and Japan, not because of natural resources, but because of political and military alliances and balances of power. Natural resources may be one element to a country or region having strategic relevance, particularly for the Middle East, but it’s probably to far to say that’s the sole usual basis.
I don’t disagree, hence my using the conditional ‘usually’. I would disagree with any suggestion a US presence is altruistic.
I would reckon there is some concern for Taiwan.
In the Persian Gulf, the tiny Emirates want us to protect them from Iran, formerly (& perhaps again) Iraq, & perhaps each other. Not that we would care a whit if not for oil.
We’re involved with Kurdistan somehow.
But yeah, we can probably get out of Spain, Germany, the UK, Japan, & maybe the Philippines at this point.
The US has a pretty small presence in Spain and the UK, mainly either as a joint NATO function, stopping off points for other European bases, or for deployment into Iraq/Middle East and Afghanistan.
The US has an even smaller presence in the Philippines, which consists of special forces Soldiers helping to train the Philippine army in counter-insurgency and doing humanitarian work. All of the large American bases there closed in the early 1990s.
Thanks Camus. Ignorance fought.