I mentioned about a month ago that I had an opportunity to do a guest post on Classical Values explaining why I’m not as afraid as Simon is of removing our troops from our military bases around the world. Well, I finally got it written and Simon posted it yesterday. Here it is!
Excerpt:
The United States has almost 40,000 troops in Japan. But the Japan Self-Defense Forces have over 247,000 active troops and the country’s military expenditures rank 7th worldwide. We have over 53,000 troops in Germany. Germany’s military has over 200,000 active troops and the 6th largest expenditures in the world. I think these countries can defend the threats of non-democracies without us taking up space there and donating millions to their military budgets. As the Cold War collapsed, we closed 60% of our bases in the 1990′s, and the world did not erupt in violence. There is even less reason to believe such things would happen if we finished the closings today.
As I explain in the post, I’m not absolutely convinced that Paul’s policy is not dangerous, but I present several reasons that I am very skeptical that it is. Hope you like it.
Nice article. Although I doubt we should close all of our overseas bases, which I think is what Paul wants, I do agree that the great majority of them can probably be closed without ill effects. One issue that does concern me that you didn’t mention are possible effects from the change itself; that is, even if everything would be better if we didn’t have troops in, say, South Korea in the first place, the act of removing troops that are already there might send the wrong message to North Korea’s leadership.
On the matter of drones, I recently read that more than 30% of all US military aircraft are now unmanned, many of them controlled overseas by “pilots” still in the US. I know a lot of libertarians are worried about drone warfare for other reasons, but it does make it easier to bring troops home from overseas.
Thanks for the comment. Good point about the effects of changing the status quo; you would definitely have to take that into account in the cost/benefit calculation. Unfortunately that might just add more uncertainty to the whole thing.
I had heard that drone statistic as well, but I hadn’t thought of it in the libertarian context. That’s an interesting dilemma, if you will.
Nice article. Although I doubt we should close all of our overseas bases, which I think is what Paul wants, I do agree that the great majority of them can probably be closed without ill effects. One issue that does concern me that you didn’t mention are possible effects from the change itself; that is, even if everything would be better if we didn’t have troops in, say, South Korea in the first place, the act of removing troops that are already there might send the wrong message to North Korea’s leadership.
On the matter of drones, I recently read that more than 30% of all US military aircraft are now unmanned, many of them controlled overseas by “pilots” still in the US. I know a lot of libertarians are worried about drone warfare for other reasons, but it does make it easier to bring troops home from overseas.
Thanks for the comment. Good point about the effects of changing the status quo; you would definitely have to take that into account in the cost/benefit calculation. Unfortunately that might just add more uncertainty to the whole thing.
I had heard that drone statistic as well, but I hadn’t thought of it in the libertarian context. That’s an interesting dilemma, if you will.