It doesn't need to be complex. Lots of governments going to war based on messy histories of treaties and agreements gets innocent people killed, creates new animosity, and solves nothing. What happened in Afghanistan? Billions spent, thousands dead, and the Taliban is back in charge 20 years later with zero evidence any of it was ever connected to 9/11. That isn't nuanced geopolitics, that's a clusterfuck of death and destruction enriching the political class.
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Absolutely... but my point is that military aid is tied up with trade agreements, visa agreements, intelligence-sharing, foreign policy and a lot more. I'm not saying that I want it to be complicated, and I'm not defending that complexity, I'm just pointing out that if the USA just stopped providing military aid it would affect the country in so many different ways.
Maybe it would be worth it in the long run, I have no idea, I'm sure there are way more factors involved than I'm aware of.
Not contributing directly to death and destruction or enabling conflicts to grind populations down would be immediately worthwhile and beneficial in the long term. Any economic losses would be worth it compared to the cost in lives, and I suspect the alleged losses would be more than counterbalanced by restoring wealth to the populace instead of leaving it in the hands of politicians.
Totally agree about the cost of lives, but I'm not following about the counterbalance of restoring wealth to the populace. If visa agreements and trade agreements with the US were disrupted, how would US citizens paying more for imported goods, US farms and manufacturers having tariffs placed on exported goods and US companies no longer able to hire the world's best and brightest transfer wealth from the politicians to the people?
Why would not bombing people drive up the cost of trade? If it does, that seems to imply we have a bigger problem with state control of trade, which does not in any way violate my anarchist preconceptions.
Because military allies are more likely to trade with each other.
For example, USA and South Korea have a Mutual Defense treaty, they have a free trade agreement, they also have a tax treaty. There might be a bunch of stuff I don't know about. If the US threw away its Mutual Defense treaty with South Korea like you're suggesting, maybe the other treaties and agreements with Korea don't change... or maybe they do, I'm honestly not sure.
The free market loves Just In Time logistics, because it saves money on storage, but the downside is a lack of resiliency, so whenever there has been supply chain shipping disruptions, US companies, especially the auto manufacturers, struggle without micro processors from Taiwan. This is exactly why the CHIPS act was passed, to encourage microchips to be made in the US to decrease the corporate dependency on Taiwan... but it'll take a few years to really come into play.
Intelligence-sharing really helps US companies. Corporate cybersecurity teams interact with US intelligence agencies to both alert them and be alerted on cybersecurity threats and fixes. Some US companies are attacked 100s of millions of times every second. I don't know for sure, but I imagine the US intelligence agencies are also interacting with the intelligence agencies of its military allies to help all allied companies. I'm sure you know that the North Korean state and Russian private hacker groups attack outside companies relentlessly.
I think America has something defense treaties with something like 50 other countries. If it declared all those treaties null and void then I'd say that's likely to have unintended consequences regarding trade, etc.
Is the US the world's richest country that chooses to spend a huge budget on its military, or is the US so wealthy because it has the world's strongest military? No idea myself, but I'm sure valid arguments could be made for both sides.
Why do you believe military allies are more likely to trade with each other? Neutral countries are open to trade with everyone, and there is no direct link between trade and military alliances. Correlation of trade and defense agreements is not evidence of a causal relationship. However, military agreements do directly result in embargoes and blockades of nations, which is antithetical to free trade.
The free market does not "love" any particular business model or supply chain by default. It just means various individuals and voluntary associations are free to find what works and change as needed without political intervention.
Regional specialization and trade are beneficial to everyone. Imagine of Canada mandated only Canadian-grown citrus fruit could be sold in Canada for an extreme example of why economic nationalism is dumb. Yes, most of the world's chips are made in Taiwan, but you may want to look at the many anti-market factors which also pushed manufacturing overseas. Taxes and regulatory pressures played a major role in making domestic manufacturing untenable in the US, and new subsidy schemes or mandates do not restore sustainability, they add chaos.
The US became wealthy through freer markets and freer trade, and only this wealth created by market action made the Leviathan State parasite possible. It is now killing its host, and military expansion with pointless wars is one of the key indicators of a dying empire.
Military allies provide a sense of stability.
Trade Agreements usually have processes to resolve international company disputes and dealings with companies in countries without an agreement can be a costly legal exercise.
It's not just trade, this stability offers US companies opportunities to partner with international companies on specific ventures which obviously requires a lot of trust since billions of dollars are often at stake.
I don't know if the USA develops military alliances specifically for trade or if its developed alliances with major trading partners but a huge number of its top 30 trading partners are also military allies.
Again, I'm not saying that I agree or disagree whether this is all the right way or best way to operate. I'm just saying that I have no idea what the cost to US companies and citizens would be if the US were to drop all its military alliances.