"they want [US military bases] there to deter hostile actors like Russia and China while also adding money to their economy"
!["they want [US military bases] there to deter hostile actors like Russia and China while also adding money to their economy"](/api/ImgurImages?id=ORajsVW.jpg)
Posted Nov 2, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC
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"Adding money to the economy". Also spreading covid, getting into brawls at pubs, dealing drugs, stealing shit and other petty crimes and raping the female population. On top of that a legion of entitled army wives hating the local country with a fiery passion. Gee, I wonder why some people want the bases gone. /s
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Also spreading covid, getting into brawls at pubs, dealing drugs, stealing shit and other petty crimes and raping the female population
I mean who wouldn't want a bunch of foreign heavily armed, militaristically arrogant, macho morons who don't respect the locals tromping about their country?
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Maybe people who directly benefit from stability provided by a superior military force bound to protect you that you don't have to pay for?
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bound to protect you
Propaganda is a helluva drug.
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So is free defense.
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Like how those soldiers protected the Kurds?
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Trump threatened to remove troops from Germany the other day. The German population was literally like: *shrug*.
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He also said he moved them because Germany wasn't using enough of their GDP for defence. He then moved them to Belgium which is using even less.
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He also said he moved them because Germany wasn't using enough of their GDP for defence. He then moved them to Belgium which is using even less.
"Donald Trump" and "logic" simpy don't belong in the same sentence.
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Which is funny, because isn't Germany a major hub for the US military and its wars of choicr in the middle east? Its just removing something that the US benefits for in its wars of choice, while not exactly defending Germany given that there isn't a material threat of invasion there. The US needs bases near the ME for itself much more than European countrirs require the US, especially given the US has shown itself to be a supremely unreliable ally despite being the first to try and gain the support of European powers to legitimise its invasions and coups.
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Your military bases are mostly used as launching pads to fight invasive wars against impoverished countries. Russia and China aren't intimidated worth a shit.
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Yes, we here in Spain have US military bases to stop the real threat of countries that are thousands of kilometers away from our nearest borders from invading us 🙄
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Better than that! We have "free" bases that we pay for and long lasting treaties which don't benefit us in the slightest and forces us to buy really expensive things that we don't need (war machinery).
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Yeah, "we" "totally" "want" them here
Well, the Germans sure seem to. As do the Turks. The S. Koreans sure seem to want us to stay there. The Japanese don't have much choice, but even they seem to be on the fence.
Not seeing how these are imperialist colonies but whatever makes you sleep at night.
i as a german speaking for anyone i know say no we dont want american military here
Hilariously all the Germans my daughter works with at Ansbach say the exact opposite.
Yeah thats hardly an objective view of the whole of Germany though is it. Of course the people directly employed by a US military base want that base to stay, its literally their job.
Also the people of Okinawa really really want the US bases there gone, what with the rapes and other crimes that have happened that the US often stops the locals from prosecuting.
probably different environment. also ansbach isnt even germany, thats bayern
imperialism noun
a policy of extending a country's power and influence through colonization, military force, or other means.
It doesn't actually matter whether they want you there, it's still imperialism.
LMAO....so what do you call it when the nation that the base is housed in was one of the powers that attempted the genocide of a race or people, or one that attempted to dominate the world through military force, and were defeated?
Sounds more like "ensuring the stability of two continents" to me.
But hey, if S. Korea, Japan, Turkey and Germany want to counter Kim Jung Ill, Xi and Putin on their own, more power to them. Less money from the American taxpayer.
...but they don't wanna do that...and yet here you all are, whining...
Why is it always the US “ensuring stability”, not international assistance from a variety of sources? The answer is the specific military policies of the USA, which is why I call it imperialism.
South Korea and Japan specifically requested military assistance from the UN and US respectively, so I won't argue those.
Turkey shut down as many US military bases as it could in the 90s, leaving only Incirlik and Izmir airbases for NATO purposes. They specifically prevented the US from using Turkish bases for the invasion of Iraq, and have perfectly good relations with Russia. Almost 75% of Turks view the US negatively.
Bases in Germany have been shutting down ever since the Cold War, and continue to do so. When Trump threatened to withdraw fully a couple months ago, the only complaints were from local mayors who would lose a significant proportion of their population. The former US ambassador to NATO said
Im Swedish. We have no American military bases. Nor are we a member of NATO. Number of Russian attacks: 0. Number of Chinese and North Korean attacks: Bwahahaha, have you looked at a map? There are plenty of other ways of staying out of various wars. Like being a member of EU and dealing with threats to our sovereignity diplomatically.
Just as a heads up, the US has overseas bases for the same reason the UK and France have them: projecting force and influence. The UK has enclaves in Cyprus so that it can use it as a base of operations in the ME ans North Africa, the same way the US uses bases in Germany, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia to conduct its military actions and invasions. They aren't about defense, anymore than Britain is defending the Commonwealth or France is Francophone Africa, its merely a way for the US to keep a finger in things and attack who it wants to attack more easily to keep things rolling in a way it deems favourable to itself. Given the US is the only NATO nation to call for the alliance to aid it in 'defence' and its frequent attempts to garner European powers as coalition partners in wars to legitimise them more somewhat (wanted British to join them in Vietnam, various coalitions it formed for its wars in the ME, etc), compared to France's independent actions in Africa or the UK's defence of the Falklands without US participation, it would seem that the US feels the need of having European powers onside and their bases for their own needs more than the reverse. Especially given the fit they threw over France not joining the illegal Iraq War.
Support US bases if you want, its glass houses for at least two major European nations to criticise you for that, but you need to be aware that practically speaking, they exist due to US interests and work towards the US agenda, not as benevolent defence. If the US decides it would be more beneficial to not fight, nothing would stop them from withdrawing their troops if they side with the invader or just don't feel ready to fight. The US could just as easily oversea the carving up of another metaphorical Sudetenland, something immediately obvious by how non-commital the US currently is to its allies.