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

I think we should look at ways to promote "world stability" and save money at the same time. So you are right to wonder if we could do that.

That said, we can't "just cut things" and expect nothing to happen. Here are a few things:

• Lots of our supply chains would be compromised (so it would be harder to make things).
  
• Lots of the things we buy would get more expensive.
• Other nations would fill the power vacuum and the process of "sorting it out" would involve a bunch of regional wars
• We'd have fewer customers to sell to because they'd be involved in establishing peace in their region (and that would crash our export market).
• That would create even more trade deficits.
  

Even if we cut our budget in half we would still out spend Russia and China combined by more than 300 billion. The US defense budget is very bloated. One problem is how privatized the US military has gotten. Contracting many jobs out to private companies that rip off the government and US tax payers. One prime example is the chow halls are contracted out and are run very poorly by private companies.

military.com

Over $151 Million Taken from Soldiers' Paychecks for Food Costs Spent Elsewhere by the Army

@militarydotcom

The money is collected in what amounts to a tax on troops -- taken from their Basic Allowance for Subsistence payments, roughly $460 per month that is automatically deducted from the paychecks of service members.

Open link

Less people around the world would be killed especially by US manufactured weapons.

With the money saved you could do something productive and have universal healthcare to prioritise caring for people instead of killing them.

Unemployment would shoot up since the military is a gigantic welfare system for the barely employable.

These bullets are totally pulled out from the rear without any backing. They are nonsensical. None of this sort will happen.

The primary “economic” impact will be to the MIC.

America wouldn't be invading countries it didn't like.

Russia and China wouldmove in.

World trade would boom 1000% if the US stopped occupying, interfereing, sanctioning, and carrying out mass genocide across the world.

We could cut our military by 50% and still police the world (which is why giving up on Ukraine is so stupid), but if we decided to give up anyway, it wouldn’t be good. Remember last year when those Houthis in Yemen started messing with global trade and we annihilated them? If we don’t stop them, there would be other pirates who spring up, prices for all goods would increase, and it’d be much more dangerous to travel. Maybe China would try to deal with it? They’d have a lot to lose if they didn’t. But their technology is incredibly inferior to ours, so it’d be far more costly.

China would move asap to conquer all of Asia, starting with Taiwan. Then Afrika.

Russia would asap refill Soviet Union, then move on Middle East thru the Caucasus. India and Turkey would most likely survive intact.

You're looking at this all wrong. The only question you should be asking is "Will it help me run faster?"

Policing the world? What are you talking about?

Biden, Harris and Mayorkas let 622,000 convicted criminal gang members INTO our country…. On purpose!

The United States Army only has a little over 400,000 soldiers in its ranks.

Look outside your window!!! We aren’t policing the world , the enemy is already in our backyard!!!!

I don't know about you, but all of my windows are boarded shut and reinforced with iron plates. I haven't left my house in weeks. It's just too risky out there. And it's also a bit of a hassle to disarm the claymore I have rigged to my front door.

What if, hear me out, instead of killing people all over the world, we helped people all over the world? We could give food aid to starving people, help them to farm and irrigate land, have large vaccination programs to prevent disease, give out AIDS medication, provide contraception to prevent overpopulation, etc. We could call it "America Aid", or something like that.

Looking at your question from a different perspective, the military provides an excellent education program for young men and women after high school. Most likely cutting military spending by 50% would result in fewer recruitments. For example, in areas of Texas enlistments are nearly 30% of each graduating class.

What would the goal would be? To reduce spending? People tend to focus on things like military spending, but you should see how large wedges in the pie chart are for social security and, to a lesser extent, medicare. So cutting military spending is like a person unable to pay their mortgage deciding to cancel your Netflix account. Good start; almost no effect.

I get the argument that migrants can put a strain on social services, but have you been directly impacted by these supposed criminal gang members? I hear this sort of rhetoric all the time but I really don't understand it. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never had my home invaded, I haven't been robbed, my pets haven't been eaten

Sounds crazy. How would that help American oligarchs?

China is going to surpass the USA as the dominant global power in the next few decades because they are doing exactly this