Ross muses on our strategic presence in Europe:
This is, I think, a very interesting geopolitical question: To what extent would Europe re-arm if America suddenly stopped garrisoning the continent? I think Steyn is right that the European model - small military, big welfare state - was originally rendered viable by the U.S. military presence. But I'm not sure that's true any more, now that the Cold War is over and the old national rivalries have given way to an end-of-history moment. What "responsibilities of adulthood" would Germany, for instance, suddenly feel compelled to take on if the U.S. closed its bases? A Franco-German arms race seem pretty unlikely; so does a sudden push to re-arm against the Polish menace to the east. Putin's Russia is a slightly-more-plausible catalyst for continental rearmament, but only by comparison with the alternatives. Moreover, if you look at defense spending around the world, countries like Germany and its neighbors are already spending much more on their militaries than many nations that live in rougher neighborhoods and don't have the U.S. to look out for them. (The much-mocked Italians, for instance, spend more on defense than Turkey, Israel and Iran put together.) It's awfully hard to imagine the absence of American troops from European soil would cause those expenditures to rise much higher.What's more plausible, I think - so plausible that I'm just cribbing the argument from lots of other people - is that the overall rate of U.S. spending on defense (rather than the location of our garrisons) is so high and so unmatchable that it drives defense spending down for everybody else (not just the Western Europeans). If you can't compete with the hyperpower, why bother trying? (Especially when you can count on fear of the hyperpower's military to prevent the kind of large-scale cross-border attacks that used to be common, and have now all but disappeared.) The Pentagon's budget isn't just subsidizing Europe; it's subsidizing the whole world. And this would be true no matter where we stationed our troops.
I'm not sure I'm so sanguine that, if we Yanks upped stakes and went home, that the Russians wouldn't become more aggressive in a decade or so; it's very hard to observe the positive effects of our presence, even as the negative effects are easy to see. I don't mean that they would march into Hungary tomorrow; but they're certainly a lot more active, in nasty ways, in former territories we aren't implicitly protecting.
But say this is so. Should we take our ball and go home? What good are the bases doing us?
1. the bases markedly improve our power projection capabilities into the middle east, africa and central asia. if we were to move out of europe, we would have to base our heavy equipment elsewhere (flying it all across the atlantic during a crisis is implausible)
2. the bases improve our military-to-military cooperation with NATO, for what it's worth in afghanistan. pulling them out now would certainly doom NATO, and weaken our cooperation with europe as a whole.
3. the bases really don't cost us any more money than maintaining our military elsewhere would-unless you plan to shrink the military significantly, which no one to the right of kucinich wants to do.
4. yes, the chances of european arms races and instability in the absence of US bases seem slim. but why risk it? what is the pressing need for us to remove these bases?
What good are the bases doing us?
jamie has already listed just about all the points that I was inclined to discussed, except for a few that concern the economics of the situation. (This is an economics blog, right?)
One of the things that are discounted by just about everyone is how overseas US military bases make significant contributions to the host country's economy. This translates into leverage to influence policy decisions made by that foreign government. The buying power of our military forces gives birth to soft power overseas.
I hear about how Americans are provincial and have little understanding of other cultures. I am less than convinced that this is true often enough to be a problem, but it seems obvious that the reverse certainly is. Most of the rest of the world has an extremely poor grasp of what it means to be an American, which is one of the reasons for the rampant anti-Americanism that has upset many pundits. ("They don't like us, and how can we fix that?")
One of the unintended consequences of having military bases overseas is that they function as a sort of cultural exchange mission. Besides fostering an appreciation of foreign cultures in our own soldiers, giving the locals a chance to meet Americans up close and personal isn't something to be dismissed out of hand.
James
I think we should. I can see Russia posing a threat to Europe, but not before they could rearm. They're grown-up nations, or at least supposed to be; they can handle their own defense for a change.
One of the unintended consequences of having military bases overseas is that they function as a sort of cultural exchange mission.
James, the military is a lousy ambassador for the US. If foreigners have mistaken impressions of the US, it's because they're meeting too many American soldiers, not too few. If your impression of France were drawn from your experiences with French soldiers, you'd have a very weird impression of France.
it's very hard to observe the positive effects of our presence - Megan
Maybe they don't exist. Having lived in Europe, I'm inclined to think they don't. If you're curious about whether European defense expenditures would go up if the US left, you should try asking some Europeans, and if their answer is an overwhelming "no", you should take it seriously.
Should we take our ball and go home?
Yes please. It's not that we don't appreciate all the stuff you did for us in the past, but really, it's time to go.
And don't forget all the secret prisons.
I was born in Germany on a military base and graduated from high school on yet another military base in Germany. I spent 20 years serving this same military. I understand all the reasons listed in the top post, but none of them, to me, are compelling.
The most important reason to maintain bases overseas is to have a forward-presence in order to be closer to future conflicts. Those conflicts are NOT likely to be in central/western Europe. If we should have significant overseas bases they should be closer to where the fighting is expected to be -- at the very least closer to Asia.
NATO? The command structure in Afghanistan is a joke and inhibits effective military operations. NATO serves no purpose other than to give many European diplomats jobs and provide a boost to the Belgian economy. If we departed, the European militaries just might have to 'grow up' and be prepared to take care of their own backyard on their own (remember the Balkans?).
During the cold war, these forward bases were very effective at displaying the face of a benevolent Armerica. No more. It's not the face we want to show Europeans anymore.
"NATO? The command structure in Afghanistan is a joke and inhibits effective military operations. NATO serves no purpose other than to give many European diplomats jobs and provide a boost to the Belgian economy. If we departed, the European militaries just might have to 'grow up' and be prepared to take care of their own backyard on their own (remember the Balkans?)."
"One of the unintended consequences of having military bases overseas is that they function as a sort of cultural exchange mission."
James, the military is a lousy ambassador for the US. If foreigners have mistaken impressions of the US, it's because they're meeting too many American soldiers, not too few.
We have many 'Cold War' legacies that are still warping our Zeitgeist, our view that we 'need' our military, in a forward-deployed position, in Europe, is just one of them.
If we were really concerned about Russia's impact on Europe, wewould help the Eurosbecome even more fuel-efficient then they are..see: Russian NatGas exports to Euroland...
The old, winning, strategy was 'Dollar-diplomacy', not diplomacy by gun-barrel..
Each year, Russia's legacy of military strength becomes less significant. While they might still have the ability to have a better weapons industry than European nations if they choose (due to experience and existing capital), that edge is vanishing rapidly. The European countries are technologically more advanced, and wealthier. Together, they have a much larger population.
the bottom line problem is: it's hard to tally the bottom line. We could pull back bases and close them, shrink the military, and wait for everyone else with the "What have you done for me LATELY" mentality to step up to the plate. How much do the ripple effects cost.
All strategies have to be rewritten, and C3 understandings change. The types of weapons you use, and how they are deployed have to change. That right there will probably eat any savings for decades.
Then you have to contend with the spectre that a future conflict arises that you have to fight the old fashioned way by real invasion, because your force projection is non-existant. Indeed, because the projection capacity wasn't there, the bad guys arose, because they had no fear of repraisal.
You can computer sim and model all of these figures, but there are too many intangibles to list... so the question is: what savings do you get? Do we imagine those savings to be real? You can put the force projection back by building more aircraft carriers, more subs and so forth, but it isn't the same.
Which is more dangerous? A 5'6" 150# man who is armed? Or a 6'2" 225# man unarmed? Obviously the 5'6" guy. But walking down the street, the larger guy is accorded the respect of his potential, while the smaller guy probably actually has to display his weapons to get the same respect. There are many intangibles in this question.
I think if we planned such a drawdown over 40-50 years, to give economies and strategy time to catch up, then sure, close the bases. But to do it in a shorter timeframe, and without lotsa thought, will ensure that we spend more money later overcoming the fact that we no longer have a base there, wherever there is.
jamie,
Excellent points regarding the complexities - you seem to have blown right past the simpler arguments that were being made.
The argument is often made, when comparing the US economy to European ones, that the US foots the bill for Keeping the World Safe, and that European nations free-ride on us. Why should France waste all their money on tanks, when they could spend it on health-care and stand behind the big US tanks?
Megan's rebuttal to this argument is, why don't we just stop spending our money on the military defense of Europe? If we're complaining that we spend all this money protecting them, why not just stop?
As you and others point out though, a lot of the military presence in Europe isn't there to defend Germany and France against invasion. It's there for larger strategic reasons, in particular the fact that it's easier to launch a force into Iraq or Afghanistan from Germany than it is to launch it from Florida.
D -
I no of no strategy that would have to be re-written since we depend upon NATO for nothing in any realistic scenario (we no longer plan for a Soviet invastion via the Fulda gap, remember?). NATO is absent in Iraq, Korea, and other significant contingencies (Afghanistan, as mentioned above, is a mess). There's no weapon system we'd have to re-tool. The only result of drawing down NATO is saving us the effort of filling useless HQs positions that contribute to nothing but bureaucratic overhead, and stopping the transfer of dollars to European economies that don't need it.
Force projection? To where? There's no conflict we're fighting now that wouldn't benefit from having bases a little closer to the problem and there's no forseeable conflict in Europe that we'd care to be part of. So, again, I ask, to where would we be projecting? The Pentagon proposal, which appears to be DOA for political reasons, is to shutter Germany and move east - closer to Asia to expeditionary bases that are cheaper and would benefit formerly communist eastern european countries where the welcome mat is at least partially still laid out.
The money we'd save in closing down western european bases would be well spent on other things. Our engagement strategy with western europe should be substantially revised and be more oriented on economic and cultural issues rather than military through NATO. This would push the Europeans to build armies that take care of their national (and EU) interests, just as we do.
It's nice to think about pulling back completely, however, and you do have a point about the ability to project, BUT we need to be able to project to places in Asia and not Europe. Our presence in Europe only serves as a crutch to Europeans who have become queasy at the site of a gun. Remember Srebrenica? My experience with the Europeans in Afghanistan (less the UK) leads me to believe Srebrenica would happen all over again without substantive changes in their mindset and force structure. I don't think that will happen as long as we're the most significant contributor to NATO.
James, the military is a lousy ambassador for the US. If foreigners have mistaken impressions of the US, it's because they're meeting too many American soldiers, not too few.
This is crazy. The military is a much better ambassador for the US than the average American. What a poor opinion of our soldiers you must have.
I'm not so certain that there would be no reason for Europeans to increase their militaries in the event of a US withdrawal from Europe. Recall that the argument by the Clinton Administration in favor of the Kosovo intervention was that Kosovo would boil over into the rest of Europe absent our intervention. Was that true? Who knows. But if we were not in Europe to intervene, might some Europeans want larger militaries to protect them from that type of potential boil over? Perhaps.
But, in any case, while I understand the reasons in favor of keeping the bases (some listed above), I am just tired of Europe's free riding. (In a similar way, I am tired of the free riding on our pharmaceutical spending. Yes, I agree with Megan that if we regulated pharma, we'd get fewer new drugs. That's a price I would be willing to pay to end Europe's and Canada's free riding on our high spending.)
Michael W. I was actually not talking about full NATO but American bases... Think of logistics, cooperation, flyover airspace and so forth. When you have to use heavy-lift aircraft to get something somewhere, you need certain kinds of runways... An ammo dump 1000 miles away is infinitely closer than one 7000 miles away, because of the kind of equipment servicing it. How do you do inflight re-fuel without a base to fly from? Do you think that commercial facilities are going to allow you to land a military air tanker and refuel it?
Think about the difference between flying a tank from the US in a C-17, and flying from someplace closer like europe or South Korea.
That's what I mean by changes in thinking if those bases aren't there. You make a change in thinking for easy deployment, and suddenly you have poorly armored HMV's in country because you can't get something armored there fast enough, or maybe there ISN"T an Armored vehicle yet that can fit the bill.
You can't think of a possibility of conflict in Europe? how far down the road are you thinking? Maybe you are right, but how much is that a function of bases that are already there? Most bases in Europe can be looked at as if they were in the US, so they support forward bases directly.
It's easier to play hopscotch if you don't have to leap a 10' chasm on the first hop. 2X5' hops are easy. One 10', and you might not make it...
I do not have the data at hand, but how expensive are our bases in Europe? Don't the Germans and others pay a lot of the expenses for the US military in Europe? I suspect that a tank base in Germany is a lot cheaper than the same base in Texas.
Doesn't anyone have any budget data on this?
Assuming that our security partnership in Iraq pans out, we should consider moving our Western European bases to Iraq and to countries in Eastern Europe. I'm sure that some Eastern European countries would love to get the local spending boost that a US base would provide.
We should not eliminate our overseas bases but we should certainly reconsider their location in light of our current strategic needs.
EI
Good question, Spencer.
Not likely. The Germans collected rent on the majority of bases and probably still do on what is left. Furthermore, the civilian employees at these facilities have to be paid at German levels and given the same long vacations, cure leaves and what not. Soldiers living on the economy pay German-level rents, subsidized by the mailitary. So all in all, Texas is a lot cheaper.
In any case, tank ranges are not the issue, because that is hardly going to be the main weapon system for as long as we hold the overwhelming advantages we do. For now what we really need is to triple the size of the capacity at Monterey for people to go through DLI.
I disagre with Brooksfoe about the quality of soldiers as amabssadors of America. Soldiers certainly repulse the 68er elites that run Western Europe, but I remember a time when it seemed like every German girl had to have had at least one American boyfriend. American soldiers' presence had a corrisive effect on the authoritarian, collectivist foundation of German culture. That may be poor diplomacy, but it is a good thing.
I see a lot of people complaining about Europeans "freeriding." How about America freeriding on Europe's gas taxes? If Europe didn't tax gas as heavily, consumption would be significantly higher and so would gas prices.
American troop deployment should be and is based on American interests, it should absolutely not be based upon whining about whatever marginal benefits Europeans get from American policies.
Who would you rather have as your cultural ambassador, someone who volunteers to shoot strangers for pay or someone who doesn't?
The horrors of a volunteer army! The people in the army who don't want to shoot people? Let them be our ambassadors!
D - It's easier to make the case for S. Korea than for Western Europe. I do believe we need some forward expeditionary bases but nothing like those we have with high schools and thousands of spouses and children just hanging about. There is one side benefit that hasn't been mentioned which is the exposure of our military and their dependents to other cultures, but as the walls get higher I believe that the interaction is decreasing (and it was never high to begin with...how many soldiers bothered to learn any German?)
Some forward, very lean airfields and training bases in Eastern Europe, some place in central Asia (realize there's a lof issues there), and a couple places in the Middle East are much preferable to Ramstein AB. There's no place to go for a tank when it rolls off a C-17 in Germany. As for refueling, I've done the C-17 trip direct to Asia with in-flight refueling. I know where those tankers came from, and it wasn't Germany.
I love Europe and intend to spend a lot more time there in the future, but I can't make any good case based on any possibility in the next 20 years for having a significant long-term military presence in W. Europe. As stated previously, I think there are some positive benefits from withdrawing - including increasing our interaction with those publics in other ways. In the long-run I believe our economic and cultural relationship would benefit without NATO getting in the way.
I think that those who advocate a pull-out from our bases in Western Europe are underestimating the diplomatic effect it would have on NATO, and our European alliances in general.
Do you think that NATO is a 'bad thing' or outdated in the 21st century? If so, say so, and explain why we would be better off with vastly fewer allied troops in Afghanistan, with our military-to-military coordination and cooperation vastly diminished, and our political alliances weakened. If we pull our troops out of Western Europe, it will be seen (rightly so) as us giving 'Old Europe' the finger. Good luck getting European political cooperation after that.
Also, the various bases in Central Asia and the Middle East are highly unreliable. We invaded Iraq in part so we could pull our troops out of Saudi Arabia. There is a strong argument that permanent Iraqi bases will only inflame the insurgency. Where, pray tell, in the Middle East or Central Asia would we have reliable permanent bases that could replace the capability we have in Europe?
I think it's much more important to have a light footprint in the various Central Asian 'stans than it is to have a light footprint in Germany.
Finally, the capability that we have built up in our current Western European bases is not easily replaced in Eastern Europe. For various technical military reasons, up and moving is not a cheap option, and neither is it a lateral move in terms of capabilities.
The Rumsfeld re-basing plan that many of you speak of was designed partly to piss off 'Old Europe' and partly to make the military lighter and more reliant on the Revolution in Military Affairs. I had thought Iraq had discredited both of those goals pretty clearly, but maybe we need to upset the Europeans even further and de-emphasize the grunt aspect of warfare.
If you look at (a US Dept. of Defense site), you'll find a link called "Total DoD - June 30, 2007" which is to a .pdf.
Here are some troop totals from that file:
US (territories included): 1,082,627
Europe: 89,183
Germany: 58,894
All foreign countries: 290,278
According to Wikipedia (Bundeswehr article), Germany has some 250,000 troops. So a total pull-out by the US would be a 1/6 reduction in forces (not counting any other country's troops that might be stationed in Germany). While that would perhaps induce Germany to bulk up its military, somehow I doubt that withdrawing the 90,000-odd US troops in Europe would, in and of itself, suddenly convince the Russians (or anyone else) that they had a green light for increased military activity in the region.
Remember our base in Uzbekistan? Good place for one. Except that it isn't there anymore, because we were expelled for criticizing the government for massacring lots of people.
Turkey? Remember, they didn't let us use our base there for the invasion of Iraq. Israel won't work, for obvious reasons. None of the Gulf states are exactly great long term risks.
No, having troops in Germany is hardly ideal for operations in the Middle East/Central Asia -- but at least we know that our bases there won't be closed down on a whim by a newly-elected government.