Why is the U.S. paying to protect wealthy countries?
Did you know that the United States Taxpayer pays for the protection of some wealthy countries?
Well President Trump knows and he wants to put a stop to it.
Several Persian Gulf monarchies, including the countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, host major U.S. military bases. Military bases in which we apparently get no or very little funding in return from the host countries. These bases obviously by the mere fact of being there protect these countries.
In an Oval Office interview with the Daily Caller President Trump stated:
We’re protecting immensely wealthy countries and they’re not paying us for the protections. I say why are we protecting you when you’re very wealthy and you wouldn’t be here for two weeks if it wasn’t for us? Why aren’t we being reimbursed for this massive cost? Fully reimbursed – for this massive cost that we’re taking care of
The Daily Caller then asked President Trump whether he felt alone in the view that these wealthy countries should pay something for that protection, he replied by saying:
Amazingly alone. Amazingly, a lot of generals don’t understand it. A lot of people don’t understand it…once you say it three or four times people start to say ‘wow he’s right about that.’ I mean I could go country after country, but I won’t embarrass them…I mean, and I say to myself, ‘okay you have a country, it’s immensely wealthy, we’re guarding it. We’re spending tremendous amounts, billions of dollars to guard and they’re not reimbursing us. Why? I’ll be honest, I’ve asked countries, I’ve said, you’ve got to reimburse us. First, they don’t understand the question. Within 5 minutes, they agree.
Back in April of this year at a White House Press Conference President Trump stated:
I don’t take responsibility but I would be very embarrassed if I had to,” he continued. “When we want to fix a highway or we want to build schools and lots of other things — tunnels, bridges — they say, 'Oh, let's be careful with our money.’ And yet we've spend $7 trillion in the Middle East and we've got nothing for it, nothing — less than nothing, so far as I'm concerned.
President Trump’s question is spot on, should the U.S. government, which means us taxpayers, at least charge for its defense services of these countries as President Trump has suggested. Should the U.S. Taxpayers be defending our rich “friends” for free?
How long will we be defending South Korea from North Korea for free or a partial payment of our troops and material being there?
If we do charge them, how much do we charge?
Do we charge the total cost, partial cost or perhaps a percentage of their GDP. We do need to understand that every nation is unique, so it would be somewhat difficult to come up with a uniform charge. How about we consider charging one percent of their countries GDP for providing a standard defense, the United States spends somewhere in the 3 – 4% range of our GDP on the military. After all countries like Denmark, Luxembourg, Australia, and Italy, which all are wealthy countries really do not face any particular threats. Other countries face greater threats so they would be charged on an increasing sliding scale for our protection.
There is quite a bit of money that other countries are not spending on their military, thus spending that money on their countries infrastructure or welfare programs, because they rely on the U.S. Taxpayer to help defend their countries. With a sliding scale I have seen some estimates that they U.S. Taxpayer could be reimbursed in the $700 billion dollar range. Currently we spend approximately $600 billion dollars a year on our military.
These funds could be a huge boost to our economy via infrastructure projects, could you image the bridges, highways and airports that could be fixed and updated.
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