I don't think the two deserve comparison. One is about protecting the planet for future generations. The other is about going into countries to blow people up, for the most part, unnecessarily.
>The North Atlantic alliance has its own military budget worth €1.29 billion ($1.4 billion), which is used to fund some operations and the NATO strategic command center, as well as training and research. But it is miniscule compared to overall spending on defense by NATO countries, which NATO estimates will total more than $921 billion in 2017.
To be clear the vast amount of money spent by the US on defence (or offence) is not directly spent on NATO. There is a NATO operating budget that is approx 0.33% of the US annual spending on military. So if the US withdrew from NATO they would not stop spending all that money on defence, sure they may close some bases in Europe and around the world but all that will do is further weaken their sphere of influence. And if there was a Russian or Chinese invasion of Europe then it would be in the US's interests to assist in any fight because if Russia or China managed to takeover mainland Europe that would be it for the USA in terms of any sort of world leader status/influence which is pretty much accepted because of the support of its NATO allies as it currently stands.
What you've said is largely true, but asserting that the US military presence in Europe costs literally nothing seems unlikely.
EDIT: I obviously misspoke using literally nothing, please replace with not a lot of money at all. The point that matters is: is it a non-trivial amount of money or not, and has it plausibly benefited Europe by decreasing the number of wars? The region does have a history of it after all.
This apparent sentiment that my line of thinking is 100% wrong feels a bit offensive to me, if anyone cares about such things, and believes that perhaps feelings affect real world behavior.
The placing of US military bases in Europe has not reduced the number of wars in Europe. That is directly related to the creation of the EU which was essentially set up for that specific purpose.
I'm not saying that there is no cost to US bases in Europe. They are probably expensive to maintain, but in general they are there because the US wants them there and they benefit the US more than the host nation. Same goes all over the world, Japan, the Middle East, Korea. The bases are there to give the US some influence and clout, it is force projection.
I would repeat for clarity that US bases in Europe have done nothing to prevent wars between EU nations, the credit for that goes to the EU.
> The placing of US military bases in Europe has not reduced the number of wars in Europe.
This is speculation.
> They are probably expensive to maintain, but in general they are there because the US wants them there and they benefit the US more than the host nation.
I agree the US wants them there, but who benefits more is far from clear.
> I would repeat for clarity that US bases in Europe have done nothing to prevent wars between EU nations, the credit for that goes to the EU.
Since you've stated this twice I'm going to have to ask for some evidence. Of course there's none as it would require running alternate threads of reality.
To be honest the EU as an organisation has probably saved as many (if not more) lives than NATO has if we are saying that preventing wars is saving lives. I have nothing against NATO but it does seem like you don't understand the system and are taking your president at his (notoriously unreliable) word.
