American Foreign Policy and International Relations
Since the end of WWII, the US has maintained a staunchly strict, aggressive, and all too often confrontational approach to its foreign policy and international relations. Instead of using its position of global leadership to foster working relationships among a variety of countries and cultures, the US prefers to take a hard-lined, "You're with us or you're against us!" approach to maintaining control and exerting authority over the nations of the world. This is not only counter-productive to global peace and stability, but also financially costly for the American taxpayers, who are forced to pay the bill to back-up this rhetoric.
The US currently has military personnel stationed in over 150 countries around the world. The annual budget allocated for US military expenses is over $600 Billion per year. For perspective, that's more than the total combined military spending for all nine other nations below us in the global top ten. That's more than three times the military budget of China, and over seven times the budget of Russia. And for what purpose?
Japan, Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, what do they all have in common? They all currently support US military bases. For what cause? WWII ended almost seventy years ago. The Cold War is over. Globalization has brought about worldwide inter-dependency between all nations. There is no need to continue this occupation of sovereign, democratic nations. The archaic military alliance of America with nations in western Europe only works to create unnecessary conflict with nations in eastern Europe.
War and conflict is not the future for any sustainable nation or society on this planet. The US needs to get out of other nations' business and allow regions the ability to sort-out their own problems for themselves. We are not the global police force for the world, nor should we have to be. Even if we do so with the best intentions, the truth is that we cannot use our military to force lasting government policies or democracy on any other sovereign nation. They must be allowed to make those decisions and come to those understandings on their own. We should lead by example, and inspire through our successes politically, economically, socially, culturally, etc.
Let's cut the bloated military budget, bring our men and women home, and use the savings and resources to better the lives of American citizens here at home in our country!