How can we reduce military costs

Given the extraordinary costs of our military establishment, we need to consider how we might reposition ourselves diplomatically to lessen our defense costs by finding ways to improve our relations with other world powers and strengthening the world apparatus for maintaining a proper peace. If we could find appropriate non-military solutions to some of our security problems, we could save ourselves a great many lives and a great deal of money while significantly improving our financial condition. If we cannot find such solutions, we at least need to examine the forces we are maintaining and determine if they are truly necessary.

We maintain about 829 military installations in 39 countries outside the United States, and we are spending billions to “defend” folks who could well afford to defend themselves if they thought it important or necessary to do so, such as Japan and our NATO allies, Canada, Mexico and South Korea. We have about 165,000 military stationed abroad-excluding the approximately 181,000 troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. This number includes 56,200 military personnel stationed in Germany, 33,100 in Japan, 26,300 in Korea, and about 9,700 in the United Kingdom and Italy each. Do we need to be providing this defense to our allies at our expense