QandO

August 14, 2004

Military Realignment: 70,000 out of Europe & Asia
Posted by McQ

Apparently the President is going to announce:

The United States plans to withdraw about 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia in a major realignment of American military presence prompted by the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the war on terrorism, U.S. officials said on Saturday.

Good. This is important and necessary. And its time Europe began paying a bit more for its own defense and a bit more attention to its own defense.

"The president is going to make an announcement about a major initiative to reduce the burden on our forces overseas," said one of the U.S. officials.

They confirmed a report in the Financial Times of a total shift of at least 70,000 troops from overseas to home bases. The British newspaper, citing people briefed on the plan, said two-thirds of the reductions would be made in Europe, mostly in Germany.

"Germany is definitely a place where there will be a major rearrangement," one U.S. official told Reuters of plans to bring two big armored units back to the United States from there.

I can imagine we'll here some real squealing when this is announced officially. The "two big armored units" are comprised of about 30,000 personnel, plus all the support units there to support them. Despite the anit-American feelings in German, this will have a pretty heavy local and perhaps regional effect in Germany economically. A lot of Germans work in and around those units and make a living off their presence.

More importantly though, the realignment will give the US military more flexibility as it will no longer have the NATO mission conflicting with the WoT mission. That and the fact there simply isn't any necessity for the large footprint in Germany and Europe. The world has changed.

There are currently more than 100,000 American troops in Europe, including about 70,000 in Germany, and another 100,000 in the Asia-Pacific region. About 150,000 additional troops are now in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This will take years to complete," said one Pentagon official, who refused to discuss the number of troops involved. "It will not, it will not, result in any reduced commitment to our friends and allies. Wherever people go down, weapons and technology will more than make up the difference."

A senior administration official traveling with Bush in Portland, Oregon, said the president "will be discussing next week how the United States will structure its military capabilities to meet the threats of the 21st century with new technologies and new capabilities."

At the moment it, with NoKo still a rogue nuclear state, it make more sense to reduce troop levels in Europe than Asia. But if and when the NoKo problem is settled, then Asia would probably see the same sort of withdrawl of US troops. The economies in Asia, where we have troops deployed, are more than able to pick up the defensive slack. And they should.

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