If defense spending cuts weren't occurring it would be more difficult to achieve these long standing goals.
Aircraft carriers need a dock and fuel not a military base.
Why would any country believe diplomacy for peace was real with a dominant military presence by the country calling for peace? For too long the USA's theory was overwhelming power would bring about stability in the international theater. That wasn't even necessary during WWII. Why would it be necessary afterward? Having a huge military presence in the world has gotten us into wars that were unnecessary. We rose to the threat in the USA when WWII visited our borders.
Peril Harbor was a lesson we learned too well, but, so did the rest of the world. Japan still obverses the lessons of that war. When do we start believing peace initiatives that provide better quality of life for a nation's citizens, over and above military power lead to peace? Overwhelming power isn't the way it works. Not anymore. When the USA, ie: Bush/Cheney, flexes muscle other nations react to meet the challenge. It robs their citizens of monies for war instead of quality of life. Military strength is good, but, preventing war is better.
I have no doubt the USA military is more benevolent than any other nation realizes. But, if a presence is undermining sincere peace initiatives, then the military is not achieving its goals either. We cannot risk unnecessary wars anymore. We need to concentrate on trusting outcomes to diplomacy.
The right political wing of the USA likes to point to Chamberlin and Hitler as a weakness. They never ask what was Chamberlin's choice otherwise? Europe was unable to stand the tide of Hitler without the USA. Chamberlin had no sincere choices, if nothing else he extended the timeline to war. He knew Europe alone could not contain Hilter, yet alone stop him. Hitler knew that, too.
This is a good thing from lessons well learned since WWII.
Friday's announcement (click here) by the United States and Japan that 9,000 U.S. Marines will be transferred from a base on the Japanese island of Okinawa is being hailed as a major diplomatic accomplishment. But there are also concerns the actual transfer will be fraught with numerous complications.
The revised realignment plan, agreed to by Japan and the United States, is seen as both a compromise and a work still in progress.
It calls for moving nearly half of the 19,000 U.S. Marines off Okinawa. Up to 5,000 are to be re-deployed to the Pacific island of Guam and 4,000 moved to either Hawaii or rotated in and out of Australia....
