Reddit reviews Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World (American Empire Project)

Well, let's see.

There's a professor based out of Washington, another professor - Harvard-educated, and a graduate in international security who writes for Time.

But hey, maybe all these guys are politically biased. That could happen, right? Let's see what the right-wing press has to say.

Oh, wait. Huh. Maybe someone with access to CIA data, then?

Well gosh and darn. Maybe the New York Times can provide a different answer?

No? Jeez, seems like ya can't trust anyone to toe the official line any more.

>Ultimately, a real program for maintaining U.S. power would involve accepting the risk of occasional security failures, rather than trying to overwhelm risk with ever-higher defense spending: There is no way for even the world’s largest economy and mightiest military to become invulnerable. The United States must identify and prioritize the greatest current and future threats to its national security rather than try to do everything, everywhere. Ineffective military interventions are siphoning off funds that could be better spent at home. They also distract the military from preparing for future wars, possibly against other great powers.
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>While there are downsides to pulling troops out of existing conflicts too quickly, waiting too long is counterproductive—more problems will be created than terrorists killed. The United States also does not need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year maintaining approximately 800 military bases in 80 countries. This is roughly double the number of countries that bases were in at the end of the Cold War, and the total amount can be reduced somewhat without severely compromising America’s ability to respond to future crises.  
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>All of this does not mean that the United States should turn inward and disengage from the world—something the Ming dynasty in China did, arguably to its detriment. Instead, the message policymakers need to absorb is one that may seem counterintuitive: Diplomacy and development may be more effective and cheaper than military spending. A smart policy prioritizing U.S. security, like the one President Trump claims he wants, would actually involve cooperating with other countries and supporting international institutions like the UN (which the president consistently denigrates), letting these institutions do the work they are designed to do, and which the U.S. military in the long term is a poor and ineffective substitute for.
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>History indicates that all great powers eventually fall. And it’s far from clear that striving to maintain American dominance at all costs would be a morally advisable course even if it were a realistic one. But the United States has the power to affect the pace of change in the dynamic global balance of power and reduce the chances of a devastating war with its rivals. Everyone, the U.S. included, would benefit from that.

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We are accelerating towards the "fall of the United States" because we are evolving slower than much of the world around us and our government is arrogant in it's belief that we are the strongest. We may be today but internal instability grows with each day and that makes it impossible for us to be effective world leaders.