What would happen if we brought all the troops home?

[Camus]

@Shakester

Our imaginings of what would happen differ. You’re imagining an apocalyptic catastrophe, I’m imagining something a lot less bloody. As it happens, I think your imaginings are probably quite far from the mark. So what? I don’t particularly wish to argue about who has the more realistic imagination, do you?

You yourself envisioned North Korea invading South Korea as well as China invading Taiwan. It looks like our imaginations aren’t that far apart.

We’re contributing, we’re doing our bit. Sorry if it seems not good enough to you, perhaps you should look up some photographs of the non-US servicemen who have died in those wars, maybe that’d make it seem a bit more like the US has some friends who can and do stand and fight beside you when the going gets tough.

Or you could throw a hissy fit because we spend less of our budget on blowing things up than you do, and act like everybody else is getting a free ride and exploiting the good old USA.

I’m not the OP and wasn’t “bitching,” “complaining” about allies not doing their part, or “throwing a hissy fit.” Don’t establish a straw man that everyone who argues with certain points of yours has to somehow overcome.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@Shakester

You do realise that without the US to drag us into those “excursions” none of our troops would be in those places in the first place?

The British roped the US into overthrowing Mossaddeq in Iran so the Brits could keep their oil company there. We installed the Shah and we know how that all eventually turned out. Iran is now one of, if not the, leading state sponsors of terrorism in the world opposed to the West. How many people have died as a result? Still dealing with that one some 30 years on.

That does not absolve the US of its crap in Iraq by any means. Just plenty of bad moves and ill-advised adventures to go around. Few countries noses are clean (probably none).

[Algher]

The US could pull out of Europe, and leave local European issues (like Yugoslavian breakup) to them. The EU might have to increase its defense spending. The US would have some force projection issues since we route through Europe on the way to and from the Middle East.

Asia is problematic due to the issues with China and Tiawan, and North and South Korea.

The Middle East would be nice to leave once Iraq is as stable as it is going to get.

[Enuma_Elish]

@Shakester

And yet, right there in the OP:
I ask this because I have come to believe that the world, as much as they purport to hate the US, has become very complacent with the idea that they don’t have to try to make things better because the USA will always be there if things go amiss.

That certainly seems to me to imply that you think the rest of the world “doesn’t try to make things better because the USA will always be there if things go amiss.”

Plenty of countries, including all of the major US allies, are definitely not complacent, and are all spending plenty of their own money on national defence and international peacekeeping.

So hopefully we can agree by now that your belief was mistaken. I certainly hope so, anyway.

That being the case, what would happen if the US packed up everything military and went home? There’d be some regional instability, for sure. Maybe even a few invasions. It’s hard to predict, even hypothetically, but while I think there would be an increase in general badness, I don’t think it’d be the apocalypse.

For instance, I think if North Korea invaded SK, the Chinese would stomp them down. North Korea is useful to China as-is, but the Chinese wouldn’t allow them to get too powerful in the region. China might take Taiwan, too, but I doubt they’d make it a bloodbath. I’d say it’s bound to happen one day, anyway.

And so on. Some adjustment, both nothing globally catastrophic.

Do you know what ‘being complacent’ means? It doesn’t mean ‘not doing a thing’.
It means letting someone else do it if you think you can get away with it.
For example: You and your girlfriend have just finished eating. The dishes need to be done. You are feeling complacent - ie self-satisfied, unconcerned, comfortable with your current state of affairs. So you let the dishes slide, because you know your gf will do them.

Does this mean that absent a gf, you would never do the dishes? No, it does not.
You would eventually see the necessity of doing them yourself.

Does this imply that you do absolutely do nothing around the house and rely on your gf for everything? No, it does not.

It means that sometimes, because there is someone else there, you let things slide a bit.

So - being complacent with the idea of not having to make things better does not imply that the world does not want to try and make things better. It implys that because the USA has been a constant presence, sometimes the rest of the world lets things slide a bit.

I just want to know how the vacuum would be filled if the USA wasn’t there.

[Enuma_Elish]

Several posters have wondered if the OP included bringing our NATO troops home.

Yes, it did. I am particularly interested in the vacumn our troop withdrawal would make in Germany. Would the Germans build up their military? Would the historic Russian fear of a large German military once again rear its head?

Absent the US, what alliances would be made between the EU and former Soviet Bloc countries.

On the other side of the globe, absent a US presence in Japan, how quickly would they retool and rebuild their military against the threat of China.

Would Japan start building long-range missles to aim at North Korea. How would North Korea respond to an actual threat instead of the perceived threat they have now.

In the Mideast, how quickly would Israel strike Iran’s nuclear sites. If air strikes didn’t work, would Israel send special forces in to finish the job? Would Israel try to kill the most militant mullahs?

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

One word: chaos.

Immediatly after withdrawl Afghanistan,and Pakistan and possibly Iraq will fall into chaos and civil war. Then the Iranians and the Chinese and the Russians will intervene. Quite possibly a Syrian invasion of Lebanon , and war between Pakistan and India.