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Right now the US military has:
90,000+ troops in Afghanistan
50,000+ troops in Germany
35,000+ troops in Japan
28,000+ troops in Korea
15,000+ troops in Kuwait
10,000+ troops in Italy
9,000+ troops in the UK
etc.
I think this is quite excessive. In fact, I think that every single one of these soldiers should be brought home. I'm curious what other TL users think about this.
Poll: Should the US reduce its global military presence?Yes, drastically (403) 72% Yes, just slightly (79) 14% No, even more troops should be deployed overseas (32) 6% No, the current situation is fine (24) 4% I don't know (22) 4% 560 total votes Your vote: Should the US reduce its global military presence? (Vote): Yes, drastically
(Vote): Yes, just slightly
(Vote): No, the current situation is fine
(Vote): No, even more troops should be deployed overseas
(Vote): I don't know
Discussion of this issue is welcome. Please don't resort to insults or nationalistic flaming (e.g. "my country kicked your country's ass in whatever war")
Edit: Also the source for these numbers, from the Department of Defense itself, is here:
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/history/hst1112.pdf
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You should maybe do two sets of polls - one for Americans and one for the rest of the world. It might be interesting to see the differences in the votes.
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As much as we would like to reduce our military presence around the world, it's necessary for the stability of certain regions and for our current global operations from a logistical standpoint.
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Fuk ya MERICA!!!! More troops more boom. Blow everything up!!! No we shouldnt have so many troops in foreign countries. It makes no sense to have such a large standing army spread throughout the globe unless you plan to go to war.
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Yes, as long as other countries are simultaneously increasing their abilities to compensate, at least slightly (Japan, Korea, Germany, the UK, Italy, etc).
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On September 08 2012 13:10 Voltaire wrote:
I think this is quite excessive. In fact, I think that every single one of these soldiers should be brought home. I'm curious what other TL users think about this.
Care to say why, and what your plan for ensuring the stability of U.S. foreign interests is afterwards?
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This should be a good thread...
Anyway, yes, as an American, it should be reduced. Drastically? Depends what that means. "every single one of these soldiers should be brought home"? No.
Though I'm curious why we even have such a presence in Germany and to a lesser extent the UK, they should be fine without us.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
It doesn't matter if they pay for it. But as far as I know. They don't.
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The Germany one does seem kind of strange. Obviously there was a reason why there were so many troops there in the past and now it's a central hub to the East, but 50k seems pretty excessive.
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A question on politics submitted by a user called Voltaire. How appropriate!
On the issue of the troops overseas, I had no idea that we had so many troops in Japan, Germany and elsewhere. At this point, I'm not really sure of it. Can someone give a reason to have so many troops overseas? (Besides quicker mobilization).
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No, unless DoD ignores its own predictions of the tappable supply to demand for many important resources peaking in this decade. In other words, DoD believes that it will be unavoidable soon (not just expedient, but unavoidable) that to maintain western standards of living, a lot of other people are going to have to get fucked over.
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On September 08 2012 13:18 seiferoth10 wrote:
This should be a good thread...
Anyway, yes, as an American, it should be reduced. Drastically? Depends what that means. "every single one of these soldiers should be brought home"? No.
Though I'm curious why we even have such a presence in Germany and to a lesser extent the UK, they should be fine without us.
Germany I believe is due to the German constitution limiting the use of their armed forces for offensive purposes. They allow US bases their as a buffer against Soviet/Russian forces. As for Italy/England/other 1st world allied countries, US troops are stationed there to bolster a lack in their national armed force or as a first response team in emergencies.
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On September 08 2012 13:20 TeuTeu wrote:
A question on politics submitted by a user called Voltaire. How appropriate!
On the issue of the troops overseas, I had no idea that we had so many troops in Japan, Germany and elsewhere. At this point, I'm not really sure of it. Can someone give a reason to have so many troops overseas? (Besides quicker mobilization).
Most of these are remnants from prior conflicts.
They do provide some amount of stabilizing force for some areas that are quite important politically/economically to the U.S., and that's probably why they're still there.
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On September 08 2012 13:20 TeuTeu wrote:
A question on politics submitted by a user called Voltaire. How appropriate!
On the issue of the troops overseas, I had no idea that we had so many troops in Japan, Germany and elsewhere. At this point, I'm not really sure of it. Can someone give a reason to have so many troops overseas? (Besides quicker mobilization).
Remnants of ages past. Japan was forbidden from having a substantial military after WW2 so the US kept troops there to prevent the USSR from swooping in and taking over. Germany was divided into East and West for many decades. The US kept a lot of troops in West Germany for similar reasons.
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We have bases in over 100 countries accross the globe, and there are Zero foreign military bases in the US. In fact, the idea of that even sounds absurd... why would we have a foreign military base in our country? Seems perfectly reasonable though that we have tons of them accross the globe- to most Americans.
Even though they don't exactly tell us on TV, these bases cause a lot of pollution and damage to the surrounding environment, and have a long history of practicing with weapons and things that aren't allowed in the US. Vieques, Puerto Rico is a good example of this, along with many of the bases in Central America. The natives do not want us there, but the government allows it for a variety of reasons.
The ammount of money and effort the US, and our species in general, spends preparing for war and killing each other is just laughably bad. Yes, drastically reduce.
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On September 08 2012 13:20 DannyJ wrote:
The Germany one does seem kind of strange. Obviously there was a reason why there were so many troops there in the past and now it's a central hub to the East, but 50k seems pretty excessive.
We like the think its been thousands of years since the last war but it's only been 70-75 years since that country tried to take over the world. I mean now ya it is less important but in retrospect 75 years is nothing.
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On September 08 2012 13:23 Bigtony wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2012 13:18 seiferoth10 wrote:
This should be a good thread...
Anyway, yes, as an American, it should be reduced. Drastically? Depends what that means. "every single one of these soldiers should be brought home"? No.
Though I'm curious why we even have such a presence in Germany and to a lesser extent the UK, they should be fine without us. Germany I believe is due to the German constitution limiting the use of their armed forces for offensive purposes. They allow US bases their as a buffer against Soviet/Russian forces. As for Italy/England/other 1st world allied countries, US troops are stationed there to bolster a lack in their national armed force or as a first response team in emergencies.
Germany is also home to the largest military hospital outside of the US and the headquarters of the US European Command.
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On September 08 2012 13:14 stevarius wrote:
As much as we would like to reduce our military presence around the world, it's necessary for the stability of certain regions and for our current global operations from a logistical standpoint.
This is a lie perpetuated by those who stand to gain from the military-industrial complex.
None of the countries on that list have any problems with stability, not even Kuwait. If anything, these foreign occupations cause instability rather than mitigate it. The motivation behind 9/11 and similar terrorist attacks came from the fact that we were in their countries. Al Qaeda was first formed because Bin Laden was horrified that the Saudi government allowed the US military to be deployed in their country.
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Read any history book. Which nations are glorified?
Britian, Rome, Japan, Egypt. Countries with a strong military presence. We do the dirty work so the other countries can keep their thumbs up their asses.
But, we'll be remembered.
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Not only can we not maintain this, but we are also losing more than we are gaining at the moment. Now, other nations hate our guts and want us out.
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EPT
