Serious question: What would happen if America stopped policing the world and cut the military by 50% or more?

They've delivered me food and tried to sell me candy on the train - IT'S TERRIFYING!!!

I think this is a really interesting question that is a political non-starter unfortunately. Because you can attempt to discern- how much can the defense budget/operations be shrunk before it has an impact on global functions. For instance, if the US can cut the defense budget but $50billion a year, and that shrinks but does not halt any activities of foreign soil bases, does it lead to any difference in aggression form China/Russia/Terrorism? Because a company can decrease budget by 5% and still meet production goals etc...

could the US save money and still police the world in the same fashion?

Would a terrorist group even know or could tell a difference if the US saved $100B a year?

Our government/political elections are set up so that question doesn't want to be answered.

Like we are spending a gadgillion dollars on the new F47 fighter jet while lower cost drones are proving to be quite effective in warfare.

obviously there are other negative externalities like research and tech advancements that could decrease with budget cuts.

Its called USAID, which DOGE / Trump just gutted

Just watch and observe. The process is underway and to some extent is already irreversible. The world has substantially woken up to the fact that the US no longer has the will or the competence to lead, and is not a reliable defense or trade partner. We haven’t cut spending on defense yet, and still insert ourselves when we feel like it, but how long can our network of foreign bases last after cementing ourselves as a worldwide economic and military threat? My prediction is less influence, less growth, less wealth, less opportunity, less freedom. But maybe all those out of work soldiers and defense contractors can get a job in all the new steel and textile mills or become lumberjacks with all the new domestic logging and it’ll all be great.

The US has played a hero/villain role for too long; it will lose its way in a peaceful world. Finding a fight anywhere anytime is the only way to keep going.

You mean "barely employable" who protect and preserve your everyday freedom?

The accuracy of that concept is also likely to be tested. I very much hope they’ll prove worthy. Currently, odds of Trump forcing a crisis and then invoking the Insurrection Act seem substantially higher than an attack from a foreign enemy.

300 Million people have been murdered by the US Manifest Destiny crack pots like TR, FDR, JDF, Wimp Bush, Obama, Biden, LBJ. Almost as much and England's 500 Million. The top murderers are the Mongols with 1 Billion in Eastern Europe from 1200AD to 1500AD.

We’d be screwed when the outer space aliens invade the earth

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There was NOT a billion people on Earth in 1200AD. The Great Khan exterminated the equivalent using today's number of 1B yes. In those days there was no SPAM, no Top Ramen to feed POWs so they just chopped off their heads. The Huns in 200AD wiped out Western Europe, Baltic States, Scandinavia, British Isles killing the equivalent ib 1 Billion too. We can read this in the DNA today of today's inhabitants.

Without the US Navy world trade wouldn't even be a thing .

you're not trying to argue and yet you are.

you seem confused like a budget conscious USA would still be spread around the world. you want your budget cuts and for the sun to never set on the US military.

short answer, taiwan and the old eastern bloc gone like that. (finger snap). china and russia might start making buddies in our hemisphere. the world splits up into more regional blocs and we aren't in any because we have made sure no one likes us.

a basic GOP fallacy a la WW2 is to want to save money on foreign policy up front that costs you a multiple if it metastasizes. you don't like spending 3.5% GDP on defense, well, when WW3 happens, we're spending 1/3 or 1/2 -- like in the world wars.

you also fail to grasp the basic 20th century history lesson on why we maybe don't want european countries armed to the hilt. we don't spend money there on defense to save germany money. we spend it so germany doesn't start up some huge army and then go nuts again.

i was reading an interesting article the other day saying the risk is that all the lawlessness and jurisdictional black holes) we are promoting in certain spaces (el salvador) end up back here. i increasingly see january 6 as a straight line rather than some off ramp.

and the people who beef about the second amendment don't seem to care about any other provision of the document lasting a week.

david brooks was saying it's the trump libertarians, who are transactional, shoving aside the conservatives, who while stick up their tookus, had some baseline morality. this should be 20x nixon and impeachment. political morality is dead.

if no one cares what the rules are this thing eventually crumbles. as with covid there is a basic failure of the libertarian right to grasp that commerce is based on a sound country with functioning infrastructure and good public health who don't think they are being so screwed they start striking all the time.

apparently the hard right fetishizes the gilded age and forgets that was the era of child labor, unlimited work weeks, no workplace safety, no retirement, no minimum wage, violent strikes.

if i wanted to be more meta, the people who don't want to be taught history that makes them feel awkward, don't understand their history and the implications of imitating old periods.

i mean the funniest thing for me is clarence thomas loves that era and that's the time period when separate but equal and segregation got going.

i mean i read this morning where trump's DOJ is trying to argue the government should refund the restitution courts sentenced january 6 convicts to who vandalized or smashed up the capitol, but were later pardoned.

this is insane. you crap in pelosi's desk, get dinged by the court to pay the government back for it, then ask it to cut you a check.

The US is a pest and is ignored.

The US is a pest and is ignored.

Whatever sh*thole you're from probably owes it's existence to the US.

Ha, critiquing the people and the system that gives you the freedom to hide behind a forum. Sounds like you'd be the first I'd draft. It'd teach you a lesson.

If I were you, I'd stick to running