Not counting those on domestic soil, the USA maintains 800+ military bases across 150+ of the 190+ nations on Earth. Russia has bases abroad in all of 10 nations. North Korea has 0 foreign bases. But who is branded the aggressor? And then there’s the issue of USA embassies abroad. As Berlin learned fairly recently, these can evidently serve as hubs for the CIA and the NSA to physically conduct illegal and unwarranted surveillance, even sabotage, on foreign grounds. Most of those 800+ USA military bases maintained on foreign soil do not actually have permission to be where they are. Only in rare cases is the land bought or rented, or freely given. Imagine ANYBODY welcoming themselves to US soil for ongoing military installations, especially without license to do so.
Yet the USA won’t permit any foreign military bases on its own land, not even close allies such as Canada, the UK or Israel. But most of the world’s nations are expected to be alright with an ongoing USA military presence in their own neighborhoods. How is that not the apex of double standards?
Shuttering each and every one of these installations abroad, selling the land back for literal pennies regardless of cost or gifting it back where stolen (Guantanamo Bay as but one of many examples), would save countless lives, improve global trade relations to unprecedented degree, and cut federal spending in half. And in all honesty it would likely freeze military conflicts in every nation but the ones where Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia eyeball the oil.
Instead the current Presidential administration, in keeping with the prior Presidential administration, is set on refurbishing the USA nuclear arsenal, which is astronomically dumber than trying to put out fires with gasoline. If they were truly a deterrent then nobody since the atomics dropped on the women and children of Nagasaki and Hiroshima should have them, but a dozen nations and Israel do. Dead people can’t buy stuff, showing the foresight of war profiteers, who really should be pressured into getting real jobs.
The mindset of “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” is tailor-fitted for shunning all personal responsibility, particularly where regards uniformed soldiers. They should not be so eager to murder for a government that offers them no other choices in life but to murder for their government. Military is the trade most prone to acts of domestic abuse, by a huge margin. Warped people programmed to do warped things. Very naturally.
Suffice to say, no other nation on Earth spends even half as much on its military as does the USA. If one were to take all of the domestic and foreign bases of every nation on the planet and add them all up, the total is dramatically fewer than what the USA apparently feels the burning need for. Enraged, but on eggshells about it all.
There are always third options though. We all have third eyes so that we might actually see quite a lot further than the end of the barrel of a gun. War is the opposite of wisdom.