The Pentagon anticipates the creation of new facilities with troop rotation so as not to invest in schools and houses for families
Yankees go home’. In the 1980s, graffiti artists from all over the world learned to write ‘Yankees out!’ that covered the walls of half of Europe. Those were the Reagan days. Spain premiered democracy and the American bases smelled of Francoism, but the war in Ukraine has turned anti-American sentiment and the Pentagon’s own policies upside down.
General Mark Milley, chief of staff, told congressmen on Tuesday that the war could last “years”, but the allies, especially those from the Baltic countries or Eastern Europe such as Poland or Romania, would be “very much in favor” of it. create new permanent bases for US troops in the region and even “build them and pay for it.” Of course, the times demand another format.
Since the end of the Cold War, US presidents have been gradually reducing the presence of these bases, uncomfortable for the host countries and costly for the US. The Bush and Bill Clinton administrations closed hundreds of bases in Europe and Asia considered “unnecessary” . Trump’s closed others in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. It was expected that Biden’s, who began by shelving those in Afghanistan, would put an end to that facet of American imperialism, particularly due to his conviction that the new threat comes from China.
THE KEYS:
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global presence.
Washington has 750 barracks in 80 countries that represent a cost of 55,000 million -
Critics.
The war has given luster to the questioned deployment in the EU, which accumulates decades of cuts
Having served 37 years in the Senate, Biden was a classic and ready to restore the order that Trump had destroyed on a whim. The tycoon withdrew 12,000 troops from Germany just to punish Angela Merkel’s government and reward some of those he withdrew from his populist ally in Poland. On the contrary, the Biden Administration recovered the tradition of commissioning the Pentagon to estimate forces and risks that would serve as the basis for the National Defense Strategy. By the time the key points of its first Global Posture Review were made public at the end of November, military intelligence had already detected the movement of Russian troops on the Ukraine border. That is why it disappointed those who considered that nothing was more outdated than having troops deployed in the Old Continent.
“Europe is the clearest case for the withdrawal of US military bases,” said a report by the Cato Institute, a prestigious libertarian think tank financed by the Koch brothers, who gave birth to the Tea Party. “Europe is one of the most stable regions on the planet. It has four powers – the UK, France, Germany and Russia – between which there is unlikely to be a conflict. And in the unlikely event that relations deteriorate to that extent, the existence of nuclear weapons would serve as a deterrent.’
More conflict than peace
The Government of George W. Bush itself had advocated in its Global Defense Posture Review for “reducing and consolidating the existence of military troops in Europe”, which it considered to be of little use in facing future security challenges. On the left, it was emphasized that the US bases had not served to spread democracy around the world, quite the contrary, since Washington often backed authoritarian executives and repressive regimes in exchange for being allowed to establish the bases. The Quincy Institute for Repossible Statecraft cited 19 countries among its arguments, among which Turkey, Nigeria, Honduras, Bahram and, in the past, Spain, during the Franco dictatorship, stood out. According to this, 38 non-democratic countries have US bases.
In addition, the presence of US military installations gives rise to numerous conflicts due to rapes, murders and other crimes committed by military personnel, without their soldiers being able to be tried by local authorities. “Which logically generates protests and damages the reputation of the United States,” said the report that last September advocated “improving global and United States security through the closure of military bases abroad,” as its headline read. .
With new technologies and modern means of transportation, the advantage of having troops stationed at 750 military bases spread across 80 countries is more symbolic than practical. In fact, the United States has nearly three times as many overseas military bases as it has embassies, consulates, and diplomatic missions (276, according to the Quincy Institute). They cost taxpayers some 55,000 million and represent three times more than all the other countries in the world combined.
budget hole
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has given new luster to those anachronistic bases that were considered a hole in the budgets. Still, General Milley told lawmakers Tuesday that the new vision will be to create permanent bases for US troops in the region, but not to send staff permanently but in shifts for a few months. With this, the same effect of permanence would be achieved that, in the opinion of the experts, kept the Soviet Union at bay in East Germany, without incurring the cost of building houses for families, businesses and even schools for the children of the soldiers.
NATO has preferred to send troops to Eastern Europe on shorter missions without creating permanent bases, but “that has to change,” Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters told the House Armed Services Committee last week. who leads the United States European Command.
The US presence in Europe reached more than 400,000 troops at the height of the Cold War, back in the 1950s, but by last year it had dwindled to 60,000. In fact, Trump had limited it in Germany to a maximum of 25,000 uniformed personnel as a penalty for not reaching the 2% of military spending required by NATO and for “taking advantage” of the US commercially. As soon as Biden came to power, he froze the withdrawal in march and commissioned the Pentagon and the Department of State to review the global position of the United States, which concluded with the aforementioned reports.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, whose turn it was to testify before Congress last Tuesday, said that the issue will probably be discussed at the next NATO summit to be held in June. The problem is that Washington strategists continue to believe that the real threat to the United States in the coming years will come from China, another country that yearns for the greatness of its empire and aspires to reclaim it. “I think we’ll be able to walk and chew gum at the same time,” a senior defense official told The Washington Post.
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