Yeah, especially when Europeans have mocked the US for decades for spending too much on its military while relying on security guarantees for their protection.

The US does get a lot from that in exchange, it's not like the US is being altruistic and providing security out of the goodness in your hearts, the US never does anything altruistically (as most nation-states do not), the dissonance that even well-educated Americans have as if they were footing a bill without getting nothing in return is frankly baffling.

It's infuriating how many Americans don't seem to realize that we would spend the exact same amount on our military even if Russia, China, and NATO all evaporated tomorrow.

We police the world because being the world police is fabulously profitable. You want to maintain the largest economy in the world? Well then you want to keep up the status quo of "you can do business between most countries, and can ship anything across the world for pennies per pound with near zero risk".

> "you can do business between most countries, and can ship anything across the world for pennies per pound with near zero risk"

Arguably, the biggest beneficiary of the US Navy's protection of commercial shipping has been China.

Especially considering China doesn't pay for any of that protection.

And yet because of exactly that, they are hesitant to take hostile action towards the United States, because of the whole "being starved of imported food and oil" thing that would trivially happen. That's a big reason they've been trying to build so many overland routes for shipping, to offset the inability to protect maritime shipping without US help.

Yet again it's the US explicitly spending money to keep someone dependent, similar to Russia's selling cheap gas to put economic pressure on the west.

China and the US really really really don't want to go to war, because even an unsteady "peace" between us is so goddamn profitable. But the US wants everyone to be able to sail by the Chinese coast without harassment, and China wants to own the entire sea north of Australia so.....