It would be GREAT if the U.S. pulled out of it's bases in Europe and let those countries become 'big boys' and defend themselves. How much money did the U.S. spend during the Cold War looking after our little friends to keep Russia from over running them ? I'd LOVE to see the U.S. drop NATO and the U.N., too. Kick those cowardly scofflaws out of New York, bulldoze that dump into the East River and build a skate park or something. Yes, clear out all the U.S. bases and let the Russians and Chinese move in. See how THAT works out for Europe. May as well let the Iranians and North Koreans in, too.
mghaha:
Yea, how much *unnecessary* money DID american leaderships spend on that whole cold war? imo, it was a group of yanks, who hyped up the nuclear bomb threat by terrifying your own citizens (
,
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nuclear+bomb+propaganda+1950) and thus forcing other nations on earth to also spend more and more on 'defense' (to the point of .... And that's not the only armsrace you started and pushed onto the world, and your great free market principles that you force down the throats of all humans on earth, has shown (
http://www.therules.org) to be oh-so-great, NOT.
Not to mention what your 'war on communism' did to some of ur own citizens and for instance the Vietnamese as well......
So you want to build a big wall around yourselves and never leave your already more-rotten-than-u-know USofA? Go right ahead and start lobbying. Oh wait, your dear leaders want to keep their defense industry up & running & ever expanding. So, sorry, you're probably not gonna get what u want.
Here's a little math for you, to put things about the state of the global defense industries now: we spent "2.5%" of global GDP on 'defense' in 2011 (
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS/countries?display=graph), global tax revenue was at 14.8% of GDP (
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS/countries?display=graph), and global GDP was 70.441 trillion USD, so global defense spending was 2.5*0.70441=1.761 trillion, and global tax revenue was 14.8*0.70441=10.425 trillion. That makes global 'defense' spending 16.89% of global tax income. To compare, ending world hunger would cost $30 billion a year, according to the UN. But somehow, we can't afford that, with our great adopted american free market values... :S
So ehm, i'm all for the US stopping to pump even more than that 16.89% of their tax income (afterall, you do spend by far the most on 'defense'), so that the rest of the world can invest in more constructive economic activity as well. Feel free to close those bases of urs in europe, we'll stay safe with UK+French nukes.
