Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
News out of the Pentagon is that the great retreat from Germany is beginning. Five thousand U.S. troops are being withdrawn at the request of a petulant president who can’t stand criticism of his disastrous war of choice with Iran. (Then again, maybe it wasn’t a war of choice, as it appears his commander-in-chief, Bibi Netanyahu, gave him none.)
Other countries to have annoyed Trump include Spain and Italy. In Trump’s words: “Italy has not been of any help to us and Spain has been horrible, absolutely horrible.”And we might cite Denmark here as well for refusing to hand over Greenland. Look for more U.S. troop withdrawals as “punishment.”
America! Bad Boy! Get your hand out of that cookie jar!
And wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing! The U.S. empire, to use an expression by my smarter wife today, simply has its hands in too many cookie jars. All those overseas bases (750 or more), all those overseas troop deployments, why, exactly, do we have all these? Perhaps during the height of the Cold War, an extensive network of overseas bases had a certain strategic logic in efforts to contain Soviet expansion, but ever since 1991, most of these bases have made little sense strategically. Much like Topsy, they just grew, and grew some more.
An uncontained U.S. empire features an increasingly unconstrained military-industrial complex flush with cash. This is not a good thing. The complex is drunk on money and power; future disasters are guaranteed.
Paradoxically, if America wants stronger, saner, national defense, we must make major cuts to the imperial war budget. Giving the empire yet more cash, yet more power, is a recipe for continual failure on the grandest of scales.
I don’t like the saying, but sometimes less really can be more. Less (as in lower) spending on the military will produce more (as in safer) conditions here in the U.S. and across the world.
My message to world leaders: If you have U.S. military bases in your country, please, please, insult and annoy Trump. It might be the most effective way to downsize the U.S. empire and to bring the troops home.
