[Georgelemental]

Yeah, good luck campaigning on that. Mysteriously, all your political opponents (who were at one another's throats 3 seconds ago) will consolidate, and their campaign coffers will suddenly swell with donations from the "National Endowment for Democracy" and friends. If you are really "lucky", you may even get strangely well-trained and well-armed militias opposing you!

[lesuorac]

Those bases are a great source of income for the local economy.

There's a reason despite the US military routinely asking congress to close down local bases and consolidate buildings to decrease costs that congress never lets them. That's money their district no longer gets!

[jacooper]

I hope this is sarcasm.

[lesuorac]

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/14/base-closings-hot-potato-iss...

You can search for more years if you're inclined.

[nradov]

And yet none of that happened when the Philippines evicted the US military back in 1992. There were armed militia groups opposing the central government but those had been around before and the US government never supported them.

Now the Philippines are inviting the US military back to deter Chinese aggression.

[AYBABTME]

This is a convincing take but in reality, when Trump threatened to pull out troops from many of those nations, these nations weren't excited the slightest about it.

[dmpk2k]

Yes, the leaders of those nations depend on US influence (and sometimes hard power) to remain in power.

I don’t want to oversimplify things, and yet: how did that come about?

[AYBABTME]

That's a bit of a ridiculously cynical take. The majority of democratic US allies that harbor US bases have a population that supports the presence of the troops. And those in power there aren't so because of the US military power, they were elected.

For dysfunctional or undemocratic nations, it's different.

[reducesuffering]

Poland is the biggest EU supporter of US military presence. You think Andrzej Duda is a patzy of US influence?