It's because it's not worth the expense. Vanity is a hell of a drug, but it has its limits.
The benefits would seem to flow to those countries that would have been swallowed up without Pax Americana.
No, but the USA is getting a lot of stuff in exchange for $$ which it can print for basically free. Consumers in the USA have benefitted a lot from this, which partly compensated the fact that more and more of the pie is going to the richest instead of the average American.
One can view Trump's tariff actions as preparatory for US debt default. This would crash the dollar and make imports much more expensive.
I don’t agree with Trump about much but he’s correct that the other liberal democracies have been more than happy to have us foot the bill for keeping the wolves at bay while looking down on us for doing it.
That's just explaining why it's not worth the expense.
1. There is always a national debt
2. There are always things we spend money on, nevertheless
What this fallacy avoids is the necessary question of prioritization. Some things we'd like to spend money on are more important than others. In truth, there's always money for any given thing. There's never money for everything we might desire to spend money on.
"Well, it’s worth it, we just can’t" is just nonsensical. It's either worth it or not, and making that decision requires some work.
It's a fallacy that's used by politicians all over the political spectrum, and it's highly useful for them. "We cannot possibly afford that thing you are asking for" is a lot less alienating to voters than "it's either that thing you are asking for, or this thing my donors have demanded."
It would be possible for us to continue propping up our allies who seemed (until Trump made it clear we might just take our ball and go home) completely uninterested in meeting the defense obligations agreed to, but it would come at a cost that would bankrupt us without us making other major sacrifices. We shouldn’t have to make those sacrifices to ensure the security of people who claim to be allies but don’t meet their own contractual obligations. I don’t find myself agreeing with Trump on very much, but on this one, he’s not only right, he’s the only person who could have caused any change. No other politician of either party was ever going to convince Europe to significantly increase military spending, even with the threat of Russia at their door.
It’s fairly obvious that was meant, and your comment is basically just the standard hacker news “aaaaactually”
I’d also be very surprised if US military expenditure decreased by a single cent as a result of increased spending by other NATO countries.