June 12, 2026
Since World War II, the United States has garrisoned the planet with military bases-around 75 bases in at least 80 countries. There are still bases in German, Italy, and Japan eighty years after the "good war" ended. "Evil" communist China has one base in Africa.
One U.S. overseas military base is Naval Station Rota, a joint Spanish-American naval base in Rota, Spain, that features an airfield, three docks, and large weapons and fuel facilities. President Trump was furious that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez forbade U.S. forces from using Spanish bases to support the war in Iran. Some U.S. government officials want the United States to abandon Rota.
Even more furious than the president was the neoconservative militarist and Iranophobe Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and cheerleader for the Iraq War who is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a beltway conservative think tank.
Rubin says that "Trump should not forgive Spain." Although the Rota base is "important" and "represents an essential node in U.S. logistics," he suggests that the United States withdraw from Rota and relocate to Gibraltar, a British territory 65 miles away at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula that boasts "a deep-water harbor and an airfield." Explains Rubin: "A lease on Gibraltar's British base might be symbiotic and a much better match for U.S. military and diplomatic needs than Rota."
I have a better idea. The U.S. military should stay out of both Rota and Gibraltar.
But why stop with Rota and Gibraltar?
The United States should stop going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
The United States should close all its overseas military bases.
The United States should withdraw from NATO.
The United States should end all security agreements.
The United States should end all foreign aid.
The United States should cease attacking other countries that were no threat to the United States and calling it defense.
The United States should stop spending more on defense than the next 10 countries combined.
The United States should stop bombing, maiming, and killing.
The United States should stop making widows and orphans.
The United States should turn over all of the DOD golf courses in Japan to the Japanese.
The United States should stop policing the world.
The United States should stop taking sides in civil wars.
The United States should stop entering into entangling alliances.
The United States should implement an America First foreign policy.
The United States should stop caring which flag will be hoisted on a small piece of land thousands of miles away.
The United States should stop caring who controls the shoals, reefs, and rocks in the South China Sea.
The United States should practice neutrality and non-intervention.
All U.S. troops should be brought home and stationed on America bases and ships off American coasts.
These are all characteristics of a Jeffersonian foreign policy of "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none." It served us well until it was rejected to fight the Spanish-American War in 1898.