Europeans who get offended don't need US bases. Those that need them want more US bases. For example Romania.

> Japan and S. Korea are particularly close to China and prefer we’re around to tamp down Chinese aggression.

It's not that simple. American presence on the Korean peninsula makes reunification efforts overly complicated. By some estimates, reunification would grow the Korean economy to be the third largest in the world. It would also give Koreans access to Russian pipelines and a large border with China. When climate change opens up arctic trade routes and frozen arctic resources, Russia will be in the position to benefit the most (although Putin relies too heavily on his tsarist-Stalinist strain of conservatism to be able to exploit the economy as efficiently as liberals or perhaps Chinese communists might). As convenient as it is to have a powerful ally in the U.S., the U.S. is no longer in a position where it can dictate the behaviors of foreign nations as it once used to, especially regarding China. That's simply a reality that Koreans have had to come to terms with, despite Americans seeming to believe that things can just return to how they used to be half a century ago.

Korean unification is not impeded by the presence of US troops, but by the demands of the DPRK over the nature of what the unified state would look like; it seems unlikely that the current Regime would give up its power just like that.

Remember that US troops were stationed in Berlin/ West Germany prior to German unification (i'll admit its not the exact same situation since the East German economy was relatively much stronger pre-unification than the current DPRK economy).

If you're suggesting that we should just let the DPRK take over ROK... well, I don't think any of the ROK inhabitants would like that.

> Korean unification is not impeded by the presence of US troops, but by the demands of the DPRK over the nature of what the unified state would look like.

The fact that the American military gets to decide what the Korean people want or what the reunification process will look like, is the single biggest factor hampering the peace process.

But as you know, that's not actually what's happening. If South Korea wanted they could kick the U.S. out and let North Korea come take over their government and be reunited. The U.S. would be very concerned about that, of course, but the American military is not really preventing this from happening. U.S. forces are in Korea for beneficial reasons to the U.S. and the West, but also at the behest of South Korea. Realistically, many people (from Trumpers to left-wingers) want U.S. forces out, albeit usually for different reasons, whereas the Korean government would prefer they stay in comparison.

Now, with that being said is American military presence an issue for North Korea? Yea definitely. But if the U.S. withdrew troops it's not like Korea would all of a sudden be reunited. There's a laundry list of issues that would need to be resolved. American military presence is just North Korea's go-to excuse because they seek to divide the South Korean and American alliance.

If North Korea wanted to, they could just open the borders, stop starving their people, and all that jazz. Why do they need to do all of that crap? Because 25,000 Americans are in South Korea? Yea ok.

There are actually evil people in the world that don't live in America. Many of them live in North Korea, happily starving people, raping women, and executing people for no good reason.

Americans are so fucking stupid.

Okinawa at least seems fed up with the occupation: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20210515_13/

Europe would do much better by defending itself on its own terms rather than perpetually hiding behind the Stars and Stripes. Hopefully Trump made it clear how dangerous that is.

I don't know, seems a lot of wars start from USA after WW2. The US is an empire and those bases are there to protect the empire, not the countries they sit in.

How do US bases in South Korea protect the US rather than, well, South Korea?

Pax Americana, or Pax Nato etc.

For the same reason the US pushed Saddam out of Kuwait.

The 'world order' we grew up with seems like it's strong but it's not, it's very fragile.

US protection of S. Korea / Japan / Europe is like 'propping up key dominoes' in the chain.

Wars break out sometimes fairly easily, having bullwarks ostensibly keeps them from falling down.

Obviously there are many costs and risks.

US interests, not US land.