@BansheeOne,

I forgive you as many illiterate Americans seem to be committing the same error, so it may be a language comprehension issue.

Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, isn’t cutting 8% from the defense budget, or a cumulative 40%. He is redistributing 8%, as the budget was created under Biden, and a different secretary.

The defense budget is untouched, and will likely expand as per congressional funding. He is reallocating the amount, not cutting.

https://www.defense.gov/News/N...focusing-dod-budget/

https://www.defenseone.com/pol...get-proposal/403128/

BansheeOne,
Thank you for your response. You make some good points and raise several issues which are worth consideration. I will try to address some of them...

quote:

What he did in Munich was basically like future Chancellor Olaf Scholz, then vice-chancellor under Angela Merkel, criticizing American government response to the BLM movement at a security conference in the US a month ahead of the 2016 election, telling Americans that next time they called an Article 5 over a 9/11-style event, Europe wouldn't deploy several hundred thousand troops to some sandbox over the next 20 years because, racism;

Well, I would agree with Olaf Scholz, then. The American government response to the BLM movement was horrible. It was fueled by the left and used to undermine, and defeat Trump in the 2020 elections. The people who looted and burned our cities were never prosecuted.
As for NOT invoking Article 5 over 9/11... he's right about that too. We never should have done that. Ultimately, what we did in the sandbox over the next 20 years was fruitless, and self-destructive. Sadam Hussein was a brutal dictator, but he did keep Iran at bay and provided some stability in the region. Our involvement in Afghanistan was truly a nightmare from beginning to end.

But perhaps the larger point in all of this is the nature and history of empires throughout the ages. It always begins with economic and cultural success and then the economic success provides the means for a huge military expansion. That eventually evolves into inappropriate uses of the military, and corruption of all involved.

The US may not have intended to become and empire, in fact our founding fathers warned us against "foreign entanglements" yet here we are: late stage empire.

"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world."
- George Washington Farewell Address to the People of the United States | Monday, September 19, 1796

Empires almost always end badly, first economically and then militarily. Our only way of keeping it going is through the expansion of debt, which eventually leads to hyper-inflation and destruction of the economy and complete devaluation of the currency. Our economy is hollowed out; our military will follow unless we change course drastically.

President Trump understands this which is the nature of the "America First", MAGA movement.

The US involvement in Ukraine is symptomatic of this corruption. Zelensky is just a pawn of the US (Obama/Biden) and the EU. The current war was entirely engineered by the US with EU support and this is why Zelensky and the EU are snubbing Trump… because he was not in on it. In fact, he was impeached for calling Ukraine and trying to figure out/expose what was going on. Zelensky and the EU are trying to continue the old plan and bypass Trump or coerce Trump into continuing to fund it, yet these are the same people that led the Russian collusion hoax and the impeachment. Zelensky has continued to take advice from Victoria Nuland and Susan Rice, but it's not good advice. That's why he failed so badly when he came to Washington recently.

quote:

You would hope that in the real world, both European and American commitment to joint defense will remain guided by respective national interest, not some wish to transplant the respective legal and political traditions onto allies with a different history. The last US president who made American support dependent upon American values was Jimmy Carter, and he is generally not regarded a success; the neo-conservative ideology which tried to remake the Middle East in the US image within the frame of the War on Terror also kinda went that way, with similar results.

Indeed.

quote:

Of course as I said two years ago or so on the Zelenskyy thread (somewhere around here), the US needs to become clear what its interests actually are. Does it want to continue to use European bases for power projection to Africa, the Middle East and West Asia, also to support Israel? Does it still want to control the shipping routes from the Atlantic through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean? Does it still want to rely on sites in Greenland, the UK, Poland, Romania, Spain and Turkey for missile defense?

Good questions. My best guess is that all of this must and will be scaled back.

quote:

If it wants another framework, it can be done, but won't be cheap or easy. It would not be the first time that German-American differences of opinion, for example, have had practical consequences.

I agree with that too. Many of these bases should be completely turned back over to Germany.

quote:

Without NATO, the US could alternately pay for continued use of such bases, or try to strike better deals with individual allies which have the most need for American protection, like Poland and Romania. Which wouldn't be bad for nations West of there, either. Germany, for its part, could not only sit back relatively relaxed behind that wall towards Russia, but would also be free of the obligations for host nation support and to secure supplies for NATO's eastern flank - or could charge for them. Though the currently expanding German armed forces are also in dire need of more basing, so taking over previously American-operated sites at the cost of improvements to them since being provided to the US, as regulated in NATO agreements, would be convenient.

Ultimately, something like this will happen.
The US will remain and continue to maintain it's nuclear arsenal for the foreseeable future but likely will scale back everything else.

quote:

As I noted at the same time, seriously cutting its own defense expenditures is really the only way to make its current allies take over a substantial share of providing for international security. Incidentally, the recent suggestions from the Pentagon to cut eight percent in each of the next five years pretty much conform to the total of 40 percent I calculated then. Though I'm not really seeing this yet, much like Trump's proposal to Russia that both sides should even cut their defense spending by 50 percent.

I agree with this. The US must cut back, everywhere, to avoid the previously mentioned debt fueled hyper-inflation and destruction of the economy and complete devaluation of the currency. But, as reloader-1 points out, it's not happening yet.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: chellim1,

Our European bases are in territory of former enemies.

They are not about power projection abroad.

They are, mostly, a knife at the throat of a downed opponent.

I doubt they will ever go anywhere, and Europe lacks the ability and the right to make us leave.

European culture is the predatory beast our ancestors fled.

It is not us. It has never been us. It is the antithesis of us.