No. of Recommendations: 2
China's in a different theater. You were very much aware of the fact that foreign military bases are extraordinarily useful in projecting power into those regions, so I don't accept that you really believe your dismissive labelling of our bases in Europe as being no more than a few acres for troops to "hang out" in. Our bases in the continent basically give us a massive ability to project power across the European theater and into the Middle East....and I think you know that.
Of course they do.
But new investments need to be made to reorient towards the most pressing threat axis, and that's China. There's no need to maintain fleets of airplanes and tens of thousands of troops on continentnal Europe when the need is in the Pacific theater. That's the point.
The US' Cold War philosophy was to maintain a WW2-style military capable of a "two front war" in the same vein that we were able to deal with Germany and Japan simultaneously. The problem is, that's always been a fantasy.
We have our own shortage of dollars due to our own social structure and as such we don't have the ability to build a 400 ship Navy and completely own Europe's defense at the same time.
Let's put it this way. To get back to Reagan-era levels of defense spending (~6% of GDP, about DOUBLE what it is today) we would need significant cuts in Medicare/Medicaid spending. Are you down for that? Medicare is currently 17.6% of GDP.
You keep saying that, but the response of all of these countries has been to sharply ramp up their domestic military defense expenditures and manufacturing capabilities.
Have they, now.
The Germans are expecting a massive haul of 105 new Leopard tanks. For a new forward brigade to be deployed on Russia's doorstep in Lithuania!
When, you ask? They expect to be ready by 2030. That's rocket-ship stuff.
