> The US debt is starting to become an existential problem.

1. No, it isn't. And if you think the finances of the US in 2025 are remotely similar to the finances and the world position of the British Empire in 1945, you are staggeringly wrong about either the past, or the present, or both.

2. And if it were, there's a million lower-ROI things that could be cut. Does an isolationist America really need eleven carrier groups, in a world where there are zero non-American ones?