Whenever I hear about how our military is overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan, I remember the report by Tim Kane of the Heritage Foundation, “Global US Troop Deployment 1950-2005.” It also comes in handy whenever I learn about crimes committed abroad by US servicemen, like this case in Japan. I was in Japan in 1995 when a similar crime happened in Okinawa and saw first hand the protests against US military deployment. That same year I was in Seoul South Korea and was told to be careful whenever I approached the US embassy there due to anti-American protests which didn’t involve any wrongdoing on the part of US soldiers, but was grounded in pro-North Korean Leftist politics.
Since the end of the Cold War I’ve wondered: Why are we still in these places? According to Kane’s report, as of 2005 we had 66,418 military personnel in Germany. Why? Are we still protecting the Germans from a resurgent Russia, or are we protecting Europe from a remilitarized Germany? If either case is true, why is it our responsibility?
There are 35,571 military personnel in Japan and another 30,983 in Korea. Given the anti-American rhetoric and full-blown hatred I experienced in both places, why are we still there if we aren’t wanted? To check Chinese power? Aren’t Japan and South Korea stable and advanced enough to handle their own security? If they aren’t after 50-60+ years of military presence, when are they going to be ready? And aren’t we just handing them a crutch, preventing their rearmament, and just as often, a scapegoat for their Leftist (or in the case of Japan ultra-Right) politicians? The crimes of US soldiers abroad are terrible, but they should be kept in context for what they are: extremely rare events.
Kane lists 14 nations having a presence of at least 1,000 US troops. By removing our troops from Germany, Korea, Japan, Italy, the UK, Kosovo, Turkey, Spain, Belgium and Iceland we would free up 163,442 troops – almost the equivalent of our current Iraq and Afghanistan deployments. These troops could be redeployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or sent home. It would ease anti-American sentiment in these nations and force them to make decisions and accept responsibility for their own security instead of relying upon the US to act as the World’s Policeman. As any policeman will tell you, everyone hates the cops until they are needed.
And finally, if our involvement abroad is solely due to oil (as one of my colleagues mentioned this morning), why doesn’t Kane’s graph (shown below) prove it?
Note that the level of troops deployed in the Middle East stayed below those deployed in the Americas until the 1991 Gulf War and a fraction of those deployed in Europe and East Asia. Does that mean that blood-for-oil was a recent bargain? Or is there vast oil reserves in East Asia and Europe that we don’t know about?
The “blood for oil” myth has to be one of the most pervasive spouted by the Left. The data simply does not offer any shred of evidence to support it. Neither do the facts of our troop deployments to places that don’t have oil – like Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia Herzogovina, Somalia, Grenada, and Panama.
However the data does show a American presence in Continental Europe and East Asia. Are we risking the blood of young Americans to insure a steady supply of Korean kimchi and memory chips? Are we putting men and women into harm’s way in Japan to protect the stream of anime to our shores? And are we continuing to risk our military servicemen in Europe in exchange for German BMWs and French snotty attitudes?
{ 20 comments }
Are you asking this facetiously or truly?
I have one solid reason for having a presence in Germany — the ability to quickly medevac injured soldiers to a state-of-the-art medical facility far from enemy lines.
–|PW|–
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One of the reasons we are still in Europe is because the Europeans scream bloody murder any time we say we’re going to reduce troop levels. There were a lot of economic reasons they wanted us to stay. Now that our troop levels are lower I suppose it’s possible they won’t care… but that would mean they need to beef up their own military.
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PW
A bit of both. Do we need 66,418 personnel to support 160k soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan? If so, why did we need them before 2001 when we weren’t at war?
Scott —
For me, the best reason to have troops in Germany, Japan, South Korea, etc., is that it helps project force to places in the world where we need to project it. Having those large bases in place is a lot faster than having to ship everything needed for regional C4I and support when they’re actually needed.
–|PW|–
pennywit’s last blog post..Spitzer? Spitzer!
The US is a global superpower, and that means we need bases and troops at those bases, all around the world so that we can project power to protect our interests anywhere in the world.
Now we can discuss whether the US should be a global super power or not, but that is why we have all those bases and why we are not likely to close them anytime soon.
PW
Are we projecting it on our own behalf or in the interest of allies?
Consider the 31k troops in South Korea. Is North Korea a direct threat to the USA in the same way as the Taliban or al-Qaeda? If it isn’t, why aren’t they being used in Iraq/Afghanistan?
I don’t buy the support argument – maybe because I know the military well enough to know that it is bureaucratic and tends not to use or deploy resources efficiently. Those troops are in those places because that’s where they’ve been for decades. The troops are there to contain Russia and to a lesser degree China.
Meanwhile the nature of our interests (and our threats) have changed. I have no problem sending troops to protect our energy supplies: energy is a resource our society needs to function and thrive. However the deployment figures don’t show that.
These are basic questions that I think Donald Rumsfeld tried to raise and address, but wasn’t able to effectively due to the nature of the wars he was tasked with fighting.
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Don’t mention the record low casualties. It’s considered rude and thoughtless and to indicate that you think human life is cheap.
The fact that it’s actually less bloody than many peacetime periods has no relevance whatsoever. Fascists and terrorists are setting off bombs and killing innocent civilians, and they only do so because the US is there. Never think to even imply that there’s any other possible way of looking at it.
Mikeca
Our “default” setting is isolationist. Isolationism is built into our DNA. Honestly, if it wasn’t for my support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’d say bring the troops home from both Europe and East Asia. Even with these wars I would suggest that the nature of the logistics and supplies have changed.
This isn’t the Napoleonic Era with wagon trains carrying supplies from farms to the battlefield. We have carrier groups that can sit in international waters and move anywhere in the world where they are needed. We have bombers that can take off from an airfield in Missouri, drop their precision munitions in the mountains of Afghanistan, then return home. Heck, we’ll be able to soon fly them remotely. Plus we’ve outsourced so much of the supply chain that it wouldn’t surprise me if someday we’ll be Fedexing boxes of MRE’s to the troops in the field.
As long as there is talk about the troop deployments in Iraq and
Afghanistan “overstretching” the military that defeated two separate continents at war 60+ years ago, then I’m going to question our current deployments in Germany, South Korea, Japan and other “plush billets”.
Scott Kirwin’s last blog post..Spray & Pray
Dean Esmay refers to record low casualties. Those casualties would be much higher without state-of-the-art military medical facilities available in Germany, which is closer to Iraq than the mainland United States. Whether you “buy” that argument or not, those soldiers’ lives were saved because the US has a military presence in Germany. As much as I hate to accuse somebody of not supporting the troops, I ask: Would you prefer that those soldiers’ risk of death increase for the sake of your argument?
As for US interests vs. allies’ interests — sometimes those interests are the same. North Korea, for example, has every reason to attempt to conquer South Korea. Those reasons include greater resources in the South and a distraction from the nation’s domestic woes.
Now, think about that North Korean offense’s affects on US interests. The US has an interest in maintaining stability in the Pacific, and a resurgent North Korea would hardly be conducive to that. Japan would no doubt produce nuclear weapons to counter the Korean influence. China would likely increase its already formidable military spending to containing the destabilizing North Korean menace … and so forth.
–|PW|–
pennywit’s last blog post..Spitzer? Spitzer!
China is already increasing its military spending by record amounts.
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I think perhaps the obvious is being overlooked here. If force projection can justify a presence in Germany or South Korea (and I think strategically, it can), then force projection can justify a presence in Iraq.
I can see how the Asian bases can be usefull North Korea could still cause alot of trouble if it wanted to and China is an emergent power that could potentially be hostile in the future. But the European bases are close to useless.
C’mon Iceland, the only reason we had a base in Iceland was to interdict Russian submarines on their way to attack trans Atlantic commerce in WWIII. Is that really an issue anymore. Ditto the troops in Germany, they were emplaced to gaurd the Fulda gap from the millions of Warsaw Pact troops that would pour in from East Germany. Now no Warsaw Pact, no East Germany.
The troops in Europe are only tolerated ny the Europeans as a source of income.
And as for the concerns about injured troops using German medical facilities; do those facilites really need 66,000 soldiers to gaurd and operate them. Besides with so many troops in the Middle East wouldn’t it make more sence to construct a medical base somewhere over there, like maybe in Bahrain or Qatar.
How many of you guys were actually in the military?
I reported to my first duty station, Okinawa, a week after the rape Scott references in his post.
When you talk about the support personnel, it’s essential to realize that the support personnel will always outnumber the fighting forces. I can’t remember what the tooth-to-tail ratio is in the DoD, but it’s not in favor of the warfighter.
There aren’t just doctors and those who guard them. There’s finance, logisticians, finance, personnel management, engineers, and a slew of others. And all of these people have to train daily so there are company-level elements taking care of all of their business.
Scott you say the military is bureaucratic, I say that it is necessarily so. When you are responsible for the care, well-being, training and, ultimately, the lives of thousands of personnel, you have to have systems in place for everything you do.
So, basically, there are two kinds of military — operational and support, and both are equally important to the success of any military action. Additionally, the support assignments have been a place for soldiers from operational units to rotate to after a tough assignment to rest and refit or provide some real-wold experience and training to soldiers who’ve been in these support units for some time.
With Iraq being such a large operation, our traditional mindset on operational and support has changed and pretty much everyone is going. That’s because of manpower shortages. Not that the military is undermanned by their standard, but that the standard has been made too low. The one thing Rumsfeld did best was to reduce troop levels to “right size” the force. This involved deactivating units, closing installations and transferring admin military position to government civilian jobs.
This was great in a “lean, quick fighting force” mentality. But the truth of the matter is that we just don’t have the number of units we used to have to fight multi-theater wars like we used to.
And, as redeployment of troops abroad is concerned. You just don’t take these folks out of theater and then say, “OK, you’re going to Iraq now.” Most have already been and are on some kind of recoup tour. In the Navy, they call it sea/shore rotation. You do your sea time, then you do your shore time. Even in war. Especially in war.
Well, that was rambling. I hope I made my point clear though.
Cullen’s last blog post..Snow days
Cullen,
I’m not in the military, but I’ve been told by friends and family that have been that support to combat ratio varies. If I remember correctly (and someone correct me if I’m wrong) that it’s 7 to 1 (support to combat respectively) in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other campaigns have been as low as 4 to 1.
Can’t say I’m in the military. My father was, though, and I formerly worked for newspapers that covered defense and military issues.
–|PW|–
pennywit’s last blog post..Spitzer? Spitzer!
fact that it’s actually less bloody than many peacetime periods has no relevance whatsoever. Fascists and terrorists are setting off bombs and killing innocent civilians, and they only do so because the US is there. Never think to even imply that there’s any other possible way of looking at it.
isn’t it also illegal for japan to have anything other than a small self-defense force?
Cullen
I’m not in the military but I did stay in a Holiday Express last night (grin). Seriously, my stepson is a Marine and in Anbar right now. He was on a SEAPACK through Indonesia and East Timor in Fall 2001 and was one of the first into Afghanistan. His photo even made the papers. After Afghanistan, he hit Iraq/Kuwait for a short time before he was sent to Pendleton where he put in a nice 3 year stint. Now he’s back to Iraq. The Wife was stationed at Okinawa back in the 1980s (7 years active duty Navy), and my late father-in-law was a USN commander who was in the reserves until he was in his 60s.
In short I’m familiar with how the military works; that doesn’t mean that it can’t work better.
I suppose what I’m calling for is a change in attitudes; most of the Joint Chiefs are products of Vietnam and the Cold War era.
But our threats today are different than the Cold War. Our allies aren’t weak and defenseless (well, they are weak because they have no encouragement to rearm under our protective umbrella. They have the money to rearm, but perhaps not the stomach. The latter is their problem and I don’t see why my stepson or my son should be willing to die for an Italian who isn’t willing to die for his own nation and way of life).
We need to put American interests first, and ask ourselves the question, “Is this ____ a direct threat to the United States?” North Korea is not – and should be handled by the Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans as a regional issue. Iran IS due to its sponsoring of terrorism and especially for its arming of Iraqi insurgents. Russia isn’t – at least for the foreseeable future. MAD keeps their nukes in their silos, and we have no territorial conflict with them.
Unfortunately we have lived under an internationalist approach whereby every threat in the world becomes an indirect threat to the United States. This gets us involved in places where we have no reason being (Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor to name a few). If this involvement then prevents us from deploying forces against direct threats to the USA (Afghanistan/Iraq) then we aren’t using our resources effectively.
Rumsfeld recognized this, which is why I still hold him in high regard. Unfortunately when he left, he took his reforms with him.
The military is a conservative institution – but that’s a feature not a bug. I
Scott Kirwin’s last blog post..Spray & Pray
“Fascists and terrorists are setting off bombs and killing innocent civilians, and they only do so because the US is there.”
And we wouldn’t have crime if it weren’t for all those lousy police!
“Never think to even imply that there’s any other possible way of looking at it.”
Love those closed liberal minds: never think! Never imply! There’s only one correct thought, and we’ll tell you what to think!
Glad to be a member of the great conservative institution. ;)
I don’t see overseas institutions as a burden, but as a boon. Having a forward-deployed presence is nothing but a good thing. And I agree with you. Just about all of our forward presence are no longer there for the defense of that area. No, they are there to provide a staging area or rear supply areas for forces deployed to combat.
There is some deterrent, I’m sure, but the primary reason we’re deployed abroad is for us, not for anyone else.
And karina, wow. Just wow. That was about the most uninformed comment about a region that was not written by a three-year-old I think I’ve ever read.
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