Is the U.S. Military Affordable

[Fuchs]

The U.S. military could become much more affordable if we did the following simple steps:

1. Stop subsidizing the defense of Western European and NE Asian and North American countries that are more than capable of providing their own defense. We have sustained this bill in order to keep a string on these guys that we can pull when we want them to do something that supports our interests, but may not necessarily support their own. Time to find a new tool for garnering that type of support, or come up with new foreign policies that demand it less often.

I'm not sure that this happens at all. Sure, there are troops deployed overseas, but I don't think that European security is being enhanced by U.S. troops in Europe. The European NATO military is sufficient, even if compared with Arab, Iranian and CIS military power at once.

It's similar with East Asia. South Korea's forces are clearly superior to North Korea's, and the lone U.S. division in South Korea and a few jets on Okinawa don't change that.

Taiwan's security strategy doesn't even seem to depend on military power, especially not land power. They could expect few if any U.S. land forces as reinforcement (paras maybe), but their army is the most neglected of their armed services - basically a mediocre 70's force.

I'm furthermore not even sure that the U.S. is even intent on subsidizing allied powers' national security.



My only logical explanation for the whole forward-basing (which is really risky, think Force Z) is therefore rather your third point; an extreme bully interventionist foreign policy.
It just happens to look like your first point, but that's mere façade.