Because America recognizes the benefit in addition to bearing the cost.
Like the federal debt, we always look at only half the balance sheet to maximize sensationalism.
[edit] with this type of geopolitical posturing especially, it's very difficult to calculate the benefits of everything that didn't happen as a result of your intervention, so it's especially easy to ignore. Just like investing in unit testing. How many incidents didn't happen because of the tests you wrote - and how much did that save the company? The set is probably uncountable, but we do generally accept that it's greater than zero.
Okay but you can make the same argument in reverse that the potential uncountable benefits aren't likely to be great enough for it to be acceptable to you. And many of us have come to that conclusion.
Like the federal debt, we always look at only half the balance sheet to maximize sensationalism.
[edit] with this type of geopolitical posturing especially, it's very difficult to calculate the benefits of everything that didn't happen as a result of your intervention, so it's especially easy to ignore. Just like investing in unit testing. How many incidents didn't happen because of the tests you wrote - and how much did that save the company? The set is probably uncountable, but we do generally accept that it's greater than zero.