Hey bin Ladin was your rogue operative. Your US used him. For all we know, he still was working for you. Slow clap for your army killing an old sick man instead of capturing him for questioning. You created Taliban and Al Qaeda. You had a much bigger role than Pakistan. You used Pakistan and afghanistan for your war games against the Soviets and it backfired. You tried the same Iin Iraq and Syria and it created daesh

Apologies if anybody has already addressed this topic, but I thought I'd take the chance before reading the next 50 posts. I saw this on Tee Vee on the HBO around Feb-March. It though it was a good piece. You may find it interesting too. To be honest, aside from nuclear proliferation, I would like to see Japan set loose from it's chains, and allowed to build it's military as they see fit.

Yeah, you can try and jump down from your high horse now, the world would be perfectly fine if the US pulled out of most of the countries it is in right now. I guarantee you that.

We honestly should, besides the allies that actually appreciate or need the help. We already bail out our own retards, we don’t need the worlds problems. Give the foreign aid to our debt instead. 

But is an American soldier better trained than a Chinese one? Better bang for buck.

I think in Japans case they could bolster their military efforts, I think they have shown their capability to get on really well with western powers since WW2.

Even on the tech front, China has shown an insane ability to manufacture and reproduce opponents efforts for a fraction of a cost, it's obviously lower quality, but I wouldn't underestimate their ability to replicate and mass produce.

The USA also has large chunks of Europe, Oceania, Latin America and more backing them, which will allow the USA to have the military edge for decades to come, it's not just a numbers game of military personnel.
Information is one of the biggest key aspects of it all.

Australia has assisted the USA in every single war the USA has engaged in since WW2.
We didn't have to. We chose to.
Why? Because we share a common history, we share a common culture, we are as close as Allies typically can get.

If we hypothetically elected a new government and they had a mandated proposal taken to the election to kick the Americans out, you wouldn't have a choice in the matter, Trump or not. You would be forced to leave, if you think Trump holds any power here... You would be highly mistaken, especially after insulting our prime minister.
Again, we don't actually need the USA, Australia is an entire continent that is extremely inhospitable and thus not really logistically feasible to invade and control... And we know it, it's become a meme at this point.

And we aren't actually enemies of China... In-fact, we profit more from China than any other nation due to their massive reliance on our vast resources, which is simply another reason why the USA would want us on their side, to hurt China's manufacturing potential if war did hypothetically happen.
In-fact a few of our politicians have already proposed to cut back on working with the USA in order to bolster our relationship with China, so it will be interesting to see how that conversation goes in the future.

https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/does-australia-really-need-the-us-alliance-20140512-zraey.html

As for the F-35, that is a contentious issue, it's overpriced, under delivered, we could have gotten a better deal elsewhere.

That's wishful thinking. At the very least South Korea, Japan and Israel would disagree. Most of the EU would disagree when they're under threat.

Did ISIS kill 3,000 American lives in one day?  For that matter, tell me how many Americans have been killed by ISIS losers?

Ok, people...Let's advance this debate...

Would the world be safer/more peaceful/less terrorist attacks if the USA spent say about $100 billion dollars on military spending as opposed to $700 billion?

And, would other countries like Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc. not capitalize on the USA's unilateral disarmament?

They only would have had 2 real opportunities for that, when Germany reintroduced conscription in 34 and when they reoccupied the demilitarized Rhineland in 36.

However, in both cases Germany had the public opinion on their side. France and especially Britain couldn't intervene at the time without extreme backlashes. UK was very pro Germany at the time and the population was protesting in favor of Germany as opposed the perceived hawkish attitude of the french. Both also favored a stronger Germany to oppose the Soviet Union, hence why there were only weak official protests in 34 when conscription got reintroduced.

Both also saw that the treaty of Versailles was too strict as it crippled Germany both militarily and economically (they lost over a third of their iron and coal deposits, the main driving forces of the economies of the time) and wasn't fair to them, so loosening up a bit was understandable. The thing is the Weimar Republic was thinking around the constrains already (The 100k army limit got used to keep all the officers and just released the normal soldiers of their duties, in 1928 over 65k of the 100k were officers; Tanks and planes got produced in dummy or acquired foreign companies and their crews trained in the soviet union, who got equally marginalized; and Germany developed the "pocket battleship" to keep in size constrains but put on heavy armament and engines to be both stronger and faster than comparable ships, and all weaponry developed during that time outside the constrains of the versailles treaty got an 18 at the end of their name for 1918 to hide the fact it was developed under them instead of imperial Germany), so they didn't need to ask to loosen the reins on the treaty. The fact that they didn't however did also cost them the election to more nationalistic entities, being a coalition of DVP (imperialistic, wanted to bring back the Kaiser), DNVP (fascists, but more like Mussolini or Franco and nowhere near as crazed as Hitler) and NSDAP (the Nazi Party) as the leading party of the bloc.

By 38 it was clear that the Germans had been building up a huge war arsenal, but the armament industry in the UK and France were only slowly getting back on track after they basically demilitarized themselves to cut the costs. This was necessary because World War one was so costly it crippled their economies and needed drastic cutbacks to get the economy back on track. Hence why they tried to buy time with their Appeasement politic - and why they didn't attack in 39: Their armies still weren't ready at that point and when they got ready for an offensive, Poland had long fallen.

If France had intervened in 1936 in the remilitarisation of the Rhineland Hitler possibly wouldn't have become bold enough to start a war. But that's a big "IF", it could just as well resulted in Germany waiting longer to be better prepared for war, for instance.

Defence industry is very important for USA economy. Also, unlike other expenses, defence ones enjoy a lot of exceptions in world trade rules and international agreements, so spending a lot on national defence industry (and also on non-defence items consumed by the national defence, like food, office supplies, etc), a nation can actually give its industry state aid without it being legally considered so.