Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Starship Troopers" was, as I like to repeat a quip, "based on the back cover of a novel by Robert Heinlein". ST was actually written as a script completely unrelated to the book, and the rights to the book later purchased and superficial changes (character names, etc.) made to align with the book.
Uh? The story is not the same, but the whole universe and political system are exactly the ones of the book, they just basically removed the mech-armors stuff.
The universe and political system are depicted the way those critical of Heinlein likes to depict them, but largely because Verhoeven decided to make a "perfect fascist world" to satirise and criticise it, and Heinlein is often criticised for militarist viewpoints close to fascism.
The absence of the mech-armors stuff reflects this: He's mimicked nazism (the opening has shot-for-shop parallels to a scene from Riefenstahls "Triump of the Will"; the uniforms are modelled on the Gestapo; the architecture is modelled on Speer; the weapons are WWII inspired; the newsreel clips are mimicking WWII era propaganda movies) as he saw it growing up in nazi-occupied Netherlands.
Verhoeven is quoted as saying this about the book:
> I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring,...It is really quite a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn't read the thing. It's a very right-wing book.