eli5: Why does USA have military bases and soldiers in many foreign countries?

Question

eli5: Why does USA have military bases and soldiers in many foreign countries?

In: Other

Answer 1

1. The US pays big rental fees to poorer countries for the bases they have, making it a form of foreign aid.

2. Technically, “anything goes” in international waters. US ports exist to keep the peace on international trade routes over the seas so the whole world gets their Amazon packages and gasoline without some Somali pirate stealing my knock off air fryer.

3. Someone’s ass we kicked a century ago that we needed to make sure wasn’t going to slide back into a National Socialist Worker Party {Nazi} form of government and declare war on the entire world. (Cough, Germany, cough)

4. Containment (looking at you, China) for countries that have not entered their “Colonization” stage of their history and want to try and manifest destiny all over other democratic countries. Also, in the Middle East, when a larger country (Iran) happens to find natural gas underneath the sea of its weak ass neighbor (Qatar) the weak neighbor invites a US base to move in so that it can fairly access the natural resources underneath its own borders without a neighbor bullying them out of it.

5. Space communication: SatComm (Diego Garcia) is used to communicate with satellites that are not seeable from an American horizon and their comms need to be “caught” when they are on the other side of the world.

6. Hemisphere Defense (Thule, Greenland). Someone fires a nuke over the North Pole, we need to shoot it down fast.

7. Most importantly, weak allies…No other country has a desire to spend an enormous amount of money every year to keep the world safe for practically free. We are seeing America slowly retreat from this stance, but no one wants this responsibility because of the price tag it comes with. It’s why we don’t have socialized medicine, we secure the democratic countries of the world…Russia and China don’t stay about night worried about Finland for God’s sake…it’s the US…for better or worse..

EDIT: Sorry for the language my 5 year old friend..