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If they're an ally, it's to our benefit that their military is strong.

If they become an enemy, it doesn't hurt that we built their military and know everything about it inside out.

If the US could make every other country's military a subsidiary of the US military, they would.

[FredPret]

> If they become an enemy, it doesn't hurt that we built their military and know everything about it inside out.

What if you know it inside out and all it benefits you is that you now know they have a competent and robust organization, whereas before they were bungling idiots and you only kind-of knew the extent of it?

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You will know exactly how competent and how robust as well as exactly what their limitations and weaknesses are. You'll also know all their internal procedures, what decisions they'll make in a given situation before they make them (because you taught them what to do), the exact capabilities of their weapons, where they deploy their forces, it's information the military would literally kill for against any enemy.

Maybe they would have otherwise been bungling and inept, but that is pretty poor planning to to just hope that your enemy is incompetent. The more likely scenario is they would be competent and you just wouldn't know anything about them.

A competent enemy you can predict is probably better than an incompetent one you can't. Better to know in advance exactly what competent thing they will do so you can anticipate it. Incompetent people can still get lucky and can hurt you when they act in ways you don't expect.