01-17-2017, 02:06 AM
(01-16-2017, 03:09 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: It would be nice if those developed nations weren't so reliant upon us for their national security and so forth. How many large global commitments and defense agreements does the government France or any of the other developed nations have tied to them financially?
France actually interferes with its former colonies quite a bit.
More importantly, though, the security that we provide, they pay us for.
The fact that the US is "the world's policeman" is closely related to the fact that the US dollar is the world's reserve currency. That means total reserves of US dollars held by other nations are much larger than reserves of other currencies held by the US.
Inflation of the US dollar is effectively a tax on dollar holdings, including those dollar reserves held by other countries. Last I checked, a few years ago, a 2% inflation rate "tax" on foreign net reserves of US dollars a good fraction of the US defense budget.
I think that's a reasonable deal. The way I think of it is that we use our Navy to keep trade routes open and safe for everyone and they pay for our Navy.