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.
Consider one result may be the USD not being used as a reserve currency as widely, or at all.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
BTW the UK and France resisted that disengagement when they attempted to keep Suez from Egypt in 1956 but that expedition failed, also because the USA didn't like it.
But this is not work, this is HN. I posted some unpopular views here and most people here disagree with me. I am good with that! It still feels good to express my opinions.
I hope not (!) and don’t think so. We have major natural resources and advantages. I can’t imagine a future where, assuming we mostly withdrew from the world’s stage, that any country would mess with us.
America lives of a constant influx of the best global talent and a global market for its products.
I would bet my money that American democracy would not survive when that ecosystem collapses, especially not as the American system has already transitioned into an anocracy according to some. Collapse in itself would create opportunities, but not for a simple programmer as you refer to yourself.
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.
I think is a bit unfair. The state is the UK and we cooperate with the US but are not especially told what to do by them. I note with Ukraine the UK were the first to supply anti tank weapons, long range missiles, allow strikes on Russian territory with their weapons and so on and the US tagged along after.