What is Americas military for?

The US DoD could cut the budget now and maintain the exact same global presence. The massive DoD budget isn't strictly due to the fact that the US military is expect to play Team America World Police for the whole world. The problem is the massive amount of mismanagement of DoD funding. Saying that, we still should expect the rest of the world to step up their game. Let's face reality here and no it's not mean or arrogant to say this. The reason why American allies are allowed to spend so little on their own military defense is because they have big strong America standing behind them. The military strategy of basically every country in the western world in case of conflict is "hold on until America shows up to deal with it and we'll help with what we can". That's been the policy since basically the end of WWII and that does need to change. Not saying that other nations don't have relatively competent military's but it is indeed unreasonable that the United States military is Europe's primary defense force.

I have no idea how much more the DoD budget could be cut if we pulled back from being world police, we first need to just audit the books and see how much we save then start seeing how much more we'd save if we pulled back. I honestly think the American people would be content with the amount saved if we changed nothing on a world stage and simply audited the damn books properly for once. Americans in general have no idea how wasteful the DoD actually is. I'd argue it's the single most wasteful department in the entire US Government.

 

While I too wish we could return to a more traditional nation more akin to the vision of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution the modern world makes that basically impossible. The world is too globalized now and a lot of requirements that America needs to maintain our American way of life require global stability. If America could remain "America" and be purely self sufficient within our own borders then I'd be all for it, but that's not reality. The fact that America "can" project dominance in the form of having the most powerful military in human history is itself a deterrent for much of the world. So things like disbanding the US Army won't fly in the 21st century even though in the true spirit of the Founding Fathers the "Army" is sort of supposed to be the "militia" (National Guard).

Now if we figure out a way to maintain my very comfortable affluent modern American lifestyle while simultaneously pulling back our global presence then I'm all for it.

 

I'll use my life as an example. Pretty standard upper middle class American lifestyle. The computer that I'm using the type this on is comprised of parts made from Taiwan, America, and South Korea. The truck I drive was manufactured by a Japanese company. My cell phone was manufactured by a Korean company and one of my TV's as well as probably half the stuff in my house was made in China. The raw materials used by these foreign companies to make my stuff probably came from other foreign companies and shipping the raw materials to these countries as well as shipping the finished products to me requires stable shipping lanes and trade routes.

If America and her territories could mine the materials in house to build these things in house and get them to me in house then I'm all for a more traditional isolationist approach. And for a price I'm willing to pay mind you. But since America can't/doesn't do all of these things in house we require other parts of the world to be stable enough to do these things for us. Us "turtling" over here and leaving the rest of the world to it's own devices would absolutely effect the everyday Americans way of life.

 

Exactly, the US put ourselves in that role decades ago based on decisions made by leaders who are all long since dead and gone in a world that was significantly different geopolitically compared to today. So is America ever allowed to change course or is our country just forever locked into any and every agreement ever made for the rest of our nations existence regardless of progressively changing world events?

Things change, the world changes. What made sense in the 1940s and 50s doesn't necessarily make sense now. Back then Europe was struggling to rebuild after the most devastating war in human history and there was this huge superpower threat right next door to them called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Fast forward to 2025 Europe is completely rebuilt and thriving with modern 2st century armies and the Soviet Union is gone. And in spite of what many in the media seem to believe no the Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union and absolutely does not have the ability to steamroll through Poland into Western Europe if Putin wants to.

Protect them from who is absolutely right. Who the hell is out there that is so big and powerful that Europe with their modern 21st century military's can't defend themselves from without massive US involvement? Who is this phantom enemy superpower that I've never heard of? The world is acting like America wants to invade Europe and Europe needs American help to stop us. Europe will be just fine if America takes a step back. Putin is probably smiling ear to ear right now because he's convinced the whole ignorant planet that his 3rd world outdated trash army is actually some massive global threat that only the completely overpowered United States military can handle. Putin's trash ass Red Army lost a quarter million troops trying to take a mere 1600 square miles of territory from UKRAINE. You would think that this whole Ukrainian War debacle would have put Europe more at ease but the world still seems to be panicking for some bizarre reason.

Completely modern, affluent, and capable Western Europe, calm the hell down. The big scary Red Bear is actually a red panda, you can kick his ass.

 

Fair point. In half no, but it could be scaled back if we stopped the doctrine of playing Team America World Police. But as I said before the mere fact that the US military exists in it's current state is in itself the greatest deterrent in the world at the moment. I want to maintain our ability to beat the snot out of any other nation militarily, but this whole nation building and regime change stuff can stop.

It's way more complex than just "The US Navy keeps the shpping lanes safe" though. A lot of it is global projection of strength and our ability to use our economic and military might to put us in a favorable position with other nations in a variety of things such as negotiations. "Somebody" is always going to be the most powerful nation in the world at any given point who can and will project influence on the global scale. I'd much rather that be us than anyone else.

 

Things are objectively different than after WWII. If the Soviet Union decided to invade Western Europe in the 50s, 60's, or 70's then yes you'd be in real trouble if America doesn't decide to provide assistance. The Soviet Union was a global super power, the Russian Federation is absolutely not a super power under any definition of the term. Sure Russia is no pushover nation but they are not the USSR anymore. The worst thing Russia could have done globally was actually starting this Ukraine war because they showed their cards and ended up showing the world that they actually aren't the big scary Red Army that everyone thought they were. I do this for a living, when all this was going down I was privy to information that the public didn't get at the time. We were briefed that the Russians would take Kiev within two weeks at the latest even with emergency aid packages on their way to the Ukrainian Army. Two weeks to conquer Kiev, it's been 3 YEARS with nearly a million Russian casualties including a quarter million dead and they're gridlocked in eastern Ukraine to this day. And not a single NATO fighting force is over there helping the Ukrainians, it's all the Ukrainians supplementing themselves with western hardware who managed to gridlock the supposed 2nd/3rd most powerful military on the planet to a WWI style gridlock meat grinder.

Sure they are formidable but so is EUROPE. I don't understand why this seems to keep being forgotten. I fought directly alongside many of our European allies in the past including the Brits, Polish, Romanians, Czech's, Dutch, etc. They are modern, disciplined, professional, and highly capable troops who even I couldn't usually tell the difference between them and our own US units unless we got close enough and I could see the different uniforms. The armies of western Europe aren't some rag tag guerrilla factions from the 3rd world or something. If the Ukrainian's can stop Russia virtually dead in it's tracks with NATO hardware then what do you think actual NATO troops would do to Russia? Don't sell Europe short, they are far from helpless in the face of this Russian threat. Now when it comes to nukes then yeah the whole game changes and most of this becomes a moot point.

Basically any form of nuke by Russia equals WWIII because once nukes start going off the whole world is getting involved especially the US. NATO would not tolerate Russia even deploying one of their smaller tactical nukes on the battlefield, that's a legit red line for NATO even if they nuke somebody not in NATO. If that happens then NATO is coming then China is probably going to get involved in the theater or start acting up in the Pacific and now the whole damn world is in chaos and we're all fighting each other.