When is an administration going to have the chutzpah to start charging foreign entities, governments, for our military protection? Who is going to pay for the latest round of 'advisors' and 'airstrikes' in Iraq? More sunk costs after the trillion already borrowed and spent? And not a single U.S. company coming away with an oil concession? Who's running the government's business?
Please don't leave this bill for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, to pay off China, or others that we borrow from, to pay for these new services to Iraq.
What about Japan and their contested islands with Russia? How about Taiwan and its independence from the PRC (Mainland China) who claims them? And what about the contested territory under the South China Sea between China, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan?
Why should we foot the bill alone for our forces in the Pacific, the massive expected build-up and the 7th Fleet that helps protect Australia?
Here we are, the world's superpower, the world's police force, serving many entities that pay nothing to support the services our military provides them.
How long have we been protecting South Korea? Sixty years or so? Has anyone asked what our protection is worth to them? They've become a healthy, wealthy, prosperous, technological society under our protection. I propose they pay our Defense Department something like $40 billion a year. That number will be near the same percent of their GDP -- that we spend of ours. Our taxpayers are entitled to reimbursement on a full cost basis, including all incremental costs, the equipment and munitions that we need, an overhead allocation including their share of Pearl Harbor, the Pentagon and the Commander-in-Chief -- plus a reasonable profit to the American taxpayer.
Our taxpayers are asked to spend more than double that of most of these nations we protect. Shouldn't that be equalized to some degree? Our Wall Street wizards can find many factors to assess toward a country's contribution. Beside GDP, maybe we need to take population into the formula, maybe the balance of payments in trade?
I for one am tired of seeing our forces being dispatched to one region of the world or another without a 'deal' in advance about who is picking up the tab. Our military might and defense industrial complex should be our #1 source of foreign trade revenue.
What do you think?