How many of those countries does the US have a military presence(troops) in?
"The UN Recognizes 195 Countries ... Despite recently closing hundreds of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad."
Not so bad. We only have a military presence in about 35% of the countries of the world ... and we didn't have to conquor very many.
Of course, the total includes gate and embassy guards.
......HHHHMMMMMMmmmmmmm ... very interesting indeed ....
Great answers Carl!
I was thinking more countries with regards to our military presence based on this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_deployments
The military of the United States is deployed in more than 150 countries around the world, with approximately 165,000 of its active-duty personnel serving outside the United States and its territories.[1]
Outside of active combat, US personnel are typically deployed as part of several peacekeeping missions, military attachés, or are part of embassy and consulate security. Nearly 40,000 are assigned to classified missions in locations that the US government refuses to disclose.[2]
Then, this link:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/u-s-military-personnel-deployments-country/
One question that I had when thinking about this, is if we have so many troops in other countries to make those other countries safer or enforce laws, why are we so woefully understaffed at our own southern border in trying to manage the crisis?
I know that it's not an easy solution that just requires bringing in more man/woman power but I have always felt that we are often wasting good people in trying to police/control certain, "sensitive" situations in specific countries that our chess playing military leaders like to use for tactical moves to control dynamics they want to manipulate for political or other reasons.
How many top generals got to that position by being pacifists? Their objective is to use the military to our advantage to accomplish objectives using tactics which sometimes cost lives.
Anybody that doen't have that frame of mind, isn't cut out to be a military leader.
So the point is that, historically they have cost too many lives unnecessarily because that's exactly what they do for a living and it's resulted in excessive military involvement overseas.
If one was able to compile a list of what the US accomplished in all of these countries, that included big events like the Iraq war and even the Vietnam War and on that list, broke down the monetary cost, human fatality and disability cost, property cost, emotional and health cost to those subjected to the stress/violence(on both sides) and then listed the benefits, you would find a very overwhelming result that proved that we are flushing good money, people and resources down the toilet compared to the meager benefits, which often backfire when we make things worse then before we intervened.
Ironically, Russia is now supposed to be our enemy because they interfered in the 2016 presidential election. So says the gate keepers of the information from our country, the US, who's interference in other countries affairs(military and otherwise) over the last 50 years, makes that little affair in interference look like an isolated sprinkle during the Great Flood of 1993.
This wasn't what I had in mind when starting this thread but it's what popped about after thinking about it.