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I don’t argue with your main points except to question if it is worth the money now. I was in the defense industry for 25 years, and my comments above are just

I don’t argue with your main points except to question if it is worth the money now. I was in the defense industry for 25 years, and my comments above are just my opinions on what is in the best interests of the US taxpayer today in 2024. I am questioning the value of having 800 military bases in foreign countries in 2024. What was once a good idea may not be worth the money and resources now. What does the US give up not protecting the rest of the world? I think these topics are worthy of serious dialogue.

lazide 2y ago
What is the cost economically of not having those bases? Consider one result may be the USD not being used as a reserve currency as widely, or at all.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> What does the US give up not protecting the rest of the world? The number of lives we’d lose in the next world war. The end of Pax Americana won’t be sweet. That said, I agree there should be more thought as to the marginal benefit of the 800th base.
- psunavy03 2y ago
  The marginal benefit of the so-called 800th base is giving planners and operations officers options in a crisis. The more places you either have your own infrastructure or access agreements or leases with a host country, the more you can a) disperse your force and complicate targeting when on the defensive and b) have multiple avenues of approach when on the offensive. If the enemy knows all your forces have to flow into theater via airlift landing at Krablakistan Air Base in Elbonia, they're going to make war plans involving targeting your transports and pounding the living shit out of Krablakistan Air Base with air strikes and/or ballistic missiles. And beforehand, they'll do their level best to sow discord between your government and the Elbonians to the point they reconsider your access to their base in a crisis.
- exceptione 2y ago
  > The end of Pax Americana won’t be sweet. This. Plus: - America gets soft power in return, countries keep American interests in eye too. This requires understanding the concept of win-win versus the you lose-I win mentality. - Economic contraction. There is not much growth and prosperity in a world of feuding dictatorships. Incentives in those systems are opposite to global well fare. For American oligarchs, like for their Russian counter parts, there might be some insane short-term opportunities. Chances for the sharks, not for you though. You are fish.
psunavy03 2y ago
If you really were in the defense industry for 25 years and you're making takes like that, I can only imagine you never worked on anything of consequence. This is like saying you worked in tech for 25 years and don't get what the big deal is about version control or CI/CD. Or at least that you have no idea how your business makes money or what your users want your code for. Explainable for a new hire, but for a 25-year vet, such a lack of understanding and perspective is really inexcusable.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > can only imagine you never worked on anything of consequence “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics,” Robert Barrow, former Commandant of the Marine Corps, echoing Eisenhower, echoing Cæsar. In all likelihood, the person you’re responding to had no strategic remit.
- mark_l_watson 2y ago
  I once spent 25 minutes having coffee with the CIA director (just the two of us) and once Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird slapped me on the back after I gave a presentation, giving me effectively an ‘atta-boy’. I was just a computer programmer, but I did OK. My friend, times change, and we need to re-evaluate the world situation, and what is in our best interests. Someone in this thread mentioned England’s reach of power. I am not an expert on history but I think England did a fairly good job of disengaging from being the world’s hegemony. It seems like we need to calculate our own exit strategy sometime, and hopefully several years from now.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > giving me effectively an ‘atta-boy’. I was just a computer programmer, but I did OK. I'm a highly respected computer programmer in my organization, but if I went in to the CEO and tried to advise him that his business strategy was wrong and he needed to do something different, he'd listen to me politely and then explain all the ways in which I misunderstood the situation. And he would be correct. You can have been a very good computer programmer within the DoD without having absorbed enough understanding of the geopolitical situation to have credible expertise in military strategy.
lolinder 2y ago
> What does the US give up not protecting the rest of the world? The very real probability of no longer having the strongest military in the world, which is something you express that you are still in favor of. We already tried the strategy of waiting to intervene until Europe had already been violently consolidated into one enormous and war-obsessed power. Even if you don't care about the lives of people who live outside of the US at all (which, to be clear, I do care about), that mistake cost us alone over 400k lives to fix. And do you really think that if we'd just left Hitler alone he would have been too intimidated to attack us after he'd finished mopping up Europe?
pmontra 2y ago
What would happen is that some of those countries will switch to a different geopolitical block. It's difficult to make a proposition to a country with a foreign army stationed in their territory, maybe because they lost a war 80 years ago or needed help not to lose it. It's easier if that army goes back home. If the USA want to give up their empire to China or Russia, they start with closing the bases. The fallout is economical as well, because American culture and products are going to have more competition and less reach.
inglor_cz 2y ago
"What does the US give up not protecting the rest of the world?" A whole constellation of mostly rich allies and friends, many of which may be forced to join some hostile power, in the same way that Czechoslovakia was forced by Stalin to abandon the Marshall Plan (1946) and later absorbed into the Soviet Bloc outright (1948). Aren't you happy to have countries like Italy, Germany and Japan as friends? Was it better or cheaper for an average American taxpayer when they were geopolitical adversaries? I doubt that.

lazide 2y ago

What is the cost economically of not having those bases? Consider one result may be the USD not being used as a reserve currency as widely, or at all.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> What does the US give up not protecting the rest of the world? The number of lives we’d lose in the next world war. The end of Pax Americana won’t be sweet. That said, I agree there should be more thought as to the marginal benefit of the 800th base.

psunavy03 2y ago
The marginal benefit of the so-called 800th base is giving planners and operations officers options in a crisis. The more places you either have your own infrastructure or access agreements or leases with a host country, the more you can a) disperse your force and complicate targeting when on the defensive and b) have multiple avenues of approach when on the offensive. If the enemy knows all your forces have to flow into theater via airlift landing at Krablakistan Air Base in Elbonia, they're going to make war plans involving targeting your transports and pounding the living shit out of Krablakistan Air Base with air strikes and/or ballistic missiles. And beforehand, they'll do their level best to sow discord between your government and the Elbonians to the point they reconsider your access to their base in a crisis.
exceptione 2y ago
> The end of Pax Americana won’t be sweet. This. Plus: - America gets soft power in return, countries keep American interests in eye too. This requires understanding the concept of win-win versus the you lose-I win mentality. - Economic contraction. There is not much growth and prosperity in a world of feuding dictatorships. Incentives in those systems are opposite to global well fare. For American oligarchs, like for their Russian counter parts, there might be some insane short-term opportunities. Chances for the sharks, not for you though. You are fish.

psunavy03 2y ago

If you really were in the defense industry for 25 years and you're making takes like that, I can only imagine you never worked on anything of consequence. This is like saying you worked in tech for 25 years and don't get what the big deal is about version control or CI/CD. Or at least that you have no idea how your business makes money or what your users want your code for. Explainable for a new hire, but for a 25-year vet, such a lack of understanding and perspective is really inexcusable.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> can only imagine you never worked on anything of consequence “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics,” Robert Barrow, former Commandant of the Marine Corps, echoing Eisenhower, echoing Cæsar. In all likelihood, the person you’re responding to had no strategic remit.
mark_l_watson 2y ago
I once spent 25 minutes having coffee with the CIA director (just the two of us) and once Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird slapped me on the back after I gave a presentation, giving me effectively an ‘atta-boy’. I was just a computer programmer, but I did OK. My friend, times change, and we need to re-evaluate the world situation, and what is in our best interests. Someone in this thread mentioned England’s reach of power. I am not an expert on history but I think England did a fairly good job of disengaging from being the world’s hegemony. It seems like we need to calculate our own exit strategy sometime, and hopefully several years from now.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > giving me effectively an ‘atta-boy’. I was just a computer programmer, but I did OK. I'm a highly respected computer programmer in my organization, but if I went in to the CEO and tried to advise him that his business strategy was wrong and he needed to do something different, he'd listen to me politely and then explain all the ways in which I misunderstood the situation. And he would be correct. You can have been a very good computer programmer within the DoD without having absorbed enough understanding of the geopolitical situation to have credible expertise in military strategy.

lolinder 2y ago

> What does the US give up not protecting the rest of the world? The very real probability of no longer having the strongest military in the world, which is something you express that you are still in favor of. We already tried the strategy of waiting to intervene until Europe had already been violently consolidated into one enormous and war-obsessed power. Even if you don't care about the lives of people who live outside of the US at all (which, to be clear, I do care about), that mistake cost us alone over 400k lives to fix. And do you really think that if we'd just left Hitler alone he would have been too intimidated to attack us after he'd finished mopping up Europe?

pmontra 2y ago

What would happen is that some of those countries will switch to a different geopolitical block. It's difficult to make a proposition to a country with a foreign army stationed in their territory, maybe because they lost a war 80 years ago or needed help not to lose it. It's easier if that army goes back home. If the USA want to give up their empire to China or Russia, they start with closing the bases. The fallout is economical as well, because American culture and products are going to have more competition and less reach.

inglor_cz 2y ago

"What does the US give up not protecting the rest of the world?" A whole constellation of mostly rich allies and friends, many of which may be forced to join some hostile power, in the same way that Czechoslovakia was forced by Stalin to abandon the Marshall Plan (1946) and later absorbed into the Soviet Bloc outright (1948). Aren't you happy to have countries like Italy, Germany and Japan as friends? Was it better or cheaper for an average American taxpayer when they were geopolitical adversaries? I doubt that.