[Slippery_John]

As an American, you should be against this. We've already got a perfectly good defensive treaty with them that would compel us to act. Tripwire troops are only necessary if you don't believe the other party would honor the treaty, which is a perfectly reasonable stance for Latvia to have but I'd hope my fellow Americans wouldn't be so grim about that.

Permanently stationing troops there is only a cost burden to the American tax payer. It does advance American imperialism to have Latvia surrender some of their sovereignty to us, but that isn't exactly a noble goal. And certainly it doesn't materially improve the lives of the average American citizen.

> Americans are suddenly much more popular in Europe again

If you're concerned about hearts and minds, more bases is certainly not a good thing. American military personnel tend to be wildly unpopular in the surrounding areas, actively building resentment.

[q1w2]

Tripwire troops are also to make sure Russia knows that we will act.

The biggest disaster would be if Russia thought maybe the US would stay out of it, and then we didn't.

The only thing worse than WWIII, is WWIII by accident/miscommunication.