Why do we militarily help other nations?

When their is a huge disparity between our percentage of GDP spent on defense and the country receiving aid, I see no problem with asking them to put a little more skin in the game. Commonsense will have to determine if third world countries can put more skin in the game or not. But it is hard to justify supporting developed nations if they aren't matching percent of GDP, particularly if they have large social welfare spending.

MAJ Bryan Zeski
We help others because we think helping those nations and groups furthers our interests. We do not do it just because we are a nice people.

The bottom line is that we help other nations militarily because we have decided it is OUR national interest to do so. While usually it turns out is in their national interest also, that's not the driving reason. A lot of this developed from the strategic decisions after WWII, when it was decided that we would confront the spread of communism by engaging the nonaligned nations in a competition with the USSR. Pretty much the world was like the game Risk, where the more countries you had in your color the better off you were.

So the US and the Soviet Union sought to get countries to their color by offering economic aid and military aid. It was thought that it was a zero sum game. If they didn't buy arms from us, they would buy it from the Soviets. If we didn't give them economic aid, the other side would. That's why we were willing to overlook all sorts of human rights violations and give support to some screwed up dictators. It was the "well at least it's OUR dictator" theory. It led to some strange bedfellows, such as us arming Iraq against Iran, and then selling arms to Iran as well. Sometimes we didn't want either side to win.

As for costs, the truth is that, for example, whatever our cost is to maintain our presence in Europe, it is a fraction of the cost of another war in Europe with Russia. So it is in OUR national interest to maintain that even when others don't pay their fair share. Because free capitalist countries trade with other free capitalist countries, so it is ultimately in our economic interests to deter war in Europe.

There are lots of other examples, like why we want to maintain forces in Korea and Japan and other places. Not because we are so concerned about the threat to those countries, but the threat to our own national interests should those countries fall.

I remember, probably due to my Finnish heritage, that only ONE NATION ever repaid their debt to the United States for helping/rescuing them during the war. That was the Nation of Finland. They paid the U S back for helping them during World War II.
I believe as nations, if come to your aid ( I.E. the rich oil-laden countries covered in sand who get taken over by dictators ), you should be "neighborly" or "appreciative" and pay us for helping you out! If not, that dictator would still be looting your gold reserves and setting fires to your oil!!! ( IN MY HUMBLE OPINION! )

We (the United States) has long been looked to for help when the defecation contacts the rotating oscillator. We are being compensated for our presence in a number of areas such as Japanese island of Okinawa. Now our presence there is not appreciated by many of the locals but the Japanese government still pays for a good deal of our presence. this same holds true for S. Korea, Germany and the UK. We pay for a majority of the expenses as both countries (the US and nations where we have bases) are benefiting. If we insist on the host nation paying all costs, they may just say, thanks but no thanks. All the money we have invested in infrastructure would be gone overnight. This is justified from the standpoint of the host nation receiving benefit of the US might and the US benefits from having the presence in forward locales, per se. The only area I could conceive of insisting on a nation paying for our presence would be in a situation as was encountered when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

So, Vietnam and the "Domino Effect" was correct. Strange, it has proved to be wrong with time. And the price for protecting our security in blood and treasure remains with us, enen decades later. Afganistan? Where we got involved supplying weapons and now are dying by those munitions?

It's actually a pretty new concept for an invading or assisting force to not demand some form of compensation whether it be in the form of looting, tribute, or tax. You have to fund the operation somehow and the people back home are less likely to gripe if they aren't financially affected by the war.