Why the world still needs nuclear weapons

[mrstickball]

starcraft said:

FaRmLaNd said:

Absolutely correct. America doesn't need to spend the amount of money it does to defend itself. Hell Australia is pretty much untouchable by everyone outside of some of our allies (USA, Britain) and we have next to no people in a comparable landmass.

I've often thought about America's standing nuclear and conventional arsenals.  You'd have to think that with say, two or three less carrier fleets, you'd be able to project the same or similar amount of power you currently do relative to the rest of the world.  And I couldn't see that having any effect on your home defense.

But you would save tens, even hundreds of billions a year.

The US still needs the carriers.

What the US doesn't need is to have soldiers in 156 countries around the world. 156 countries. Do we really need to be Team America: World Police? No. Not by a long shot. Of those 156 countries, we have 255,000 soldiers overseas. Each of those 255,000 soldiers cost money. Not just to America, but the money is also likely being spent overseas too - if you have a US soldier in Germany, there is a high likelihood that he will spend some of his money there, providing for their economy, not ours.

If we got out of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as removed all troops from every foreign country sans Korea and Japan (but reduced forces there, and re-negotiated a treaty with Japan allowing them to have a more robust military), we could save tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars a year - far more than nixing a carrier, which I believe we need as we do need a mobile army. We just don't need an army that is in well over half of the nations worldwide.