You got it backwards. The second Air Force in the world is the US Navy. The US Navy has 8 nuclear lead aircraft carrier groups. AFAIK, neither Russia nor China

You got it backwards. The second Air Force in the world is the US Navy. The US Navy has 8 nuclear lead aircraft carrier groups. AFAIK, neither Russia nor China have nuclear aircraft carriers. I think the US would be fine without NATO. The US projection would be mostly undamaged. Not so much the rest of the allies. It's the rest of the NATO that benefits from that projection (e.g. Somali pirates missions). BTW I very much do NOT want NATO to disband. I think it's a great alliance. But let's be realistic. The US pays for alsmost 1/4 of the NATO direct spending, and 2/3 of the indirect spending: https://www.factcheck.org/2018/07/trump-still-distorting-nato-spending/ https://www.factcheck.org/2018/07/trump-still-distorting-nat...