Should the US charge for our military protection

In My Humble Opinion
1

Much of the developed world has their military subsidized by the United States. Especially Japan and the EU the American military stands ready to defend countries around the world and largely does so at its own expense. The savings for these countries are largely spent on things like universal health care and other social programs which the US forgoes for itself.

I realize that after ww2 these places were largely unable to support themselves let alone a large military, but now these are largely very rich countries which should be supporting their own militaries or at least paying us to provide them with a ready made military.

2

No, b/c A) that’s practically extortion which is illegal b/c it’s immoral; and B) we already get money back wherever we have a military installation. But it’s funneled through profit-making channels for the most part.

Can you explain why we have military installations in Japan? I’m curious as to what you understand the reasons to be.

3

The US has military bases/ships in/near those countries because it considers it to be in its interests. Many of the host countries also do.

If a country refuses to pay the fee, does the US pull out even if it considers remaining to be in its interest?

4

Nonsense. Japan, UK, Germany and France are all in the top ten for military spending. They can all look after themselves just fine. Whatever the US does, is for it’s own interests.

The US does not “forgo” universal health care. It chooses not to have it for philosophical reasons. That is in order to allow, in the name of capitalism, parasitic middle-men corporations to bleed of money for profit.

Nah. If you want to play Empire, you can pay for it. Or you can take your protection racket and shove it.

5

The only reason to say yes, charge, is the hope that countries wouldn’t pay. Then we might avoid useless or counterproductive wars, be compelled to reduce the size of the military budget drastically, and end the self-perpetuating military industrial complex.

6

We’re not protecting them.

We’re arranging it so (among other reasons) that we have bits of our army close to places we might want it to go.

The fact that the presence of those bits deters others from attacking the countries where we keep those bits, that’s an ancillary benefit.

7

Ah, what? Not true.

The reason the US doesn’t have universal health care isn’t because it lacks the money.

Now I’m confused. Are you talking about US bases overseas, or the allies’ military forces themselves? The forces of Japan and South Korea, for instance, are fully independent of the US, and South Korea spends plenty of money on its own military.

Now I don’t know your political leanings, but I’ve found that far-leftists and far-rightists alike both have the odd belief that the US’ allies don’t do much to defend themselves and would crumble without US protection.
Finally, AIUI, countries like South Korea already compensate the US for the presence of military bases. And as for NATO? You know the only time NATO invoked Article 5, was when 9/11 took place?

8

No, that’s not true. The USA does not “subsidize” other countries’ defense, save arguably Israel and a few less developed nations.

No NATO ally, for instance, is getting paid by the USA to maintain its military.

No, that’s not true. Japan is one of the world’s top ten spenders on nationa ldefense, actually. The U.S. is allied with NATO, not the EU - they’re different things - and does not pay for its defense. NATO even has two other member countries with nuclear deterrents.

That the US spends more on defense than Spain or whatever is interesting, but it’s worth also noting that if there was war in Europe, *it’s mostly Europeans who would be dying to protect it. * They’re the ones who make up the vast majority of NATO troops. They’d be paying the highest price, by far.

Nope, also not true. Indeed, the USA spends MORE on public health care than most developed countries.

9

Being as it is OUR money, shouldn’t someone be asking us first if “we the people” want them to be giving OUR money away to other countries?

Looking at our credit card bill, we are MORE broke than other countries we are giving our “aid” to! They should be sending us money!

Our current credit card bill…
$18,152,809,942,589.00

10

Yes, the “free rider” accusation is a persistent trope with regards to US military alliances. The myth that the only reason some of the allies are able to be top tier industrialized social democracies is because they do not spend “what they should” on defense, and if we didn’t we’d have one. (In current times at least NATO has pointed out to their members that whoever draws up the budgets has been slacking off on the back a “peace dividend” from 25 years ago and they need to get back up to speed so it’s not like they themselves don’t care.)
Except: NO, we would NOT have Universal Health Care if we cut down our power projection expenditure to just defend home soil. Where have people lived since 1980? The savings would just be flipped into a huge corporate tax cut.
The thing is… when you have to maintain a level of prowess AND power projection so that you are and want to remain a World Great power, it takes a whole lot more expenditure and a whole more of an infrastructure than it takes to merely defend your border. It’s the price you pay. And you can’t afford to let your smaller proxies and clients be picked off one by one until you are boxed in your own borders because then you are no longer a Great World Power.

11

Does the representative for your district and state vote to spend tax money the way you want it spent? If not, call them to express your opinion.

12

Other countries are paying the United States for our military protection. And have been for decades.

13

To give a specific example, the United States spent $5,500,000,000 last year on our military forces stationed in Japan. Japan then paid us $4,000,000,000 that was applied to those expenses. It’s actually cheaper for the United States to station troops in Japan than it is to station them in the United States.

14

Preference 1) Withdraw all US troops inside our waters and leave them there.
Preference 2) If a country is having trouble defending or wants to build up their standing forces they can pay 100% of all costs associated with those troops including all trainings they have under gone in the past.
Preference 3) if due to our national interest ig is necessary to deploy troops to a region (retaliatory strikes, defending us trade) While there we take local resources as much as possible to defer the cost.

Generally I don’t want to be a super power any more it costs too much and there is no benefit.

15

The benefit is not having to live in a world where another country is the super power.

We’re in a position to be a super power. We can either fulfill the role or not. But if we don’t, other countries will step into the role.

16

That’s not a benefit that just sucks. If there were a super power besides us it would be China or Russia neither of them is going to do anything on our side of the ocean. So your down side is that China and Russia are going to spend billions of dollars patrolling the world and stopping humanitarian events. That sounds like a win. If you’re implying they’ll cut off trade to the US see my bullet above and I’m sure when they try to cut off trade to Europe or south America then both side of the trade deal can work equally to stop them.

Please list the down sides of someone else filling the US role on the world stage.

17

I’m not going to pretend like the US is an altruistic superpower… but compared to the foreign policy, civil rights and humanitarian records of China and Russia, I think the superpower preference ought to be clear.

I could actually be happy with the US stepping back a bit as a sole superpower, if a multinational group like NATO could allow more nations to formally share the role.

And I certainly agree with the posters here who say that US bases/alliances serves our own interests at a moderate cost compared to alternatives. It makes a nice talking point for Trump, but it’s not that simple.

18

Beyond that, we perceive a benefit from stationing troops in those countries; it’s not a case of “Rent-A-Military”, and nor are we footing the entire bill for these bases in most cases anyway.

So in the case of Japan, it’s cheaper for them to pay us to station our troops in their country- they just pay a proportion of upkeep, without all the costs associated with training, R&D, etc… And along with that, it costs us less to station the troops there than in the US.

So both sides benefit financially, and both sides benefit militarily- we get to have troops in place to deter N. Korea and China from any sort of crazy adventurism, and the Japanese benefit from that as much or more than we do.

Like others have said, the ability to project power is a Great Power kind of exercise, and I suspect the ability to extend power like the US does is more of a superpower kind of exercise.

The reason to be a military superpower as I see it, is linked with our stature as the de-facto economic superpower. If we want to keep the latter status, we need the military ability to deter anyone from messing with it unduly, and the ability to compel anyone messing with it to stop forthwith.

I mean, the Persian Gulf and Straits of Hormuz are a big choke-point for a lot of the world’s oil, and it benefits the US to maintain a presence there to dissuade the Iranians or other countries from interfering with that flow of oil tankers. It also benefits us to maintain a military large enough to stomp the crap out of any nation fool enough to try and cut that off or substantially interfere with it.

Would we prefer that China or Russia be the shepherd of the world’s oil trade routes? Can their navies handle it? Would they be as good of stewards as we are? Would it be as beneficial to the US and world economies as if the US does it?

Probably not, and that’s why we do the things we do w.r.t. military basing in other countries.

19

Society is a series of hierarchies, if the US doesn’t want to fund all these aircraft carriers and ‘force projection’ the Chinese will be pleased to take the dominant superpower role.

20

But however will billions of dollars get in the larders of General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Boeing if we allow China to take over US military efforts?? /s