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Thu. Aug 19, 2004

Debating Deployments

On the Aug. 1 broadcast of ABC’s This Week, John Kerry said “If the diplomacy that I believe can be put in place can work, I think we can significantly change the deployment of troops, not just there but elsewhere in the world — in the Korean peninsula perhaps, in Europe perhaps.”

Now that Bush has announced a plan to remove up to 70,000 troops from Europe and North Korea (over a ten year time span), Kerry seems to be singing a reflexively different tune. It reminds me of the times that Dick Cheney has criticized the “drawdown” of our military during the Clinton years. A “drawdown” plan that was written up during the Bush I administration. By a Secretary of Defense named Dick Cheney.

This is what election year does to us. It’s a good idea, until the other guy does it. Then it’s a clear mistake. I’d like to try and look past that.

First, what exactly did Kerry say?

Finally, I want to say something about the plan that the President announced on Monday to withdraw 70,000 troops from Asia and Europe. Nobody wants to bring troops home more than those of us who have fought in foreign wars. But it needs to be done at the right time and in a sensible way. This is not that time or that way.

Let’s be clear: the President’s vaguely stated plan does not strengthen our hand in the war against terror. And in no way relieves the strain on our overextended military personnel. And this hastily announced plan raises more doubts about our intentions and our commitments than it provides real answers.

For example, why are we unilaterally withdrawing 12,000 troops from the Korean Peninsula at the very time we are negotiating with North Korea — a country that really has nuclear weapons? As Senator John McCain said, “I’m particularly concerned about moving troops out of South Korea when North Korea has probably never been more dangerous than any time since the end of the Korean War.” This is clearly the wrong signal to send at the wrong time.

John Kerry: Speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars 105th Annual Convention

Hastily announced? Vaguely stated? I thought people had been talking about this for ages. Like, back in the Clinton administration. It’s far from the first I’ve heard of it. And how specific do you need to be? “These heavily armored and mechanized forces are no longer needed here, and by the end of this decade they will be based elsewhere.” Well, trust Phil Carter to help us with the specifics:

Currently, the United States has 116,400 military personnel from all four services assigned to its European Command, an organization that oversees U.S. military affairs in 93 countries spanning Europe, North Africa, and part of the Middle East. Roughly two-thirds of these—56,000 soldiers and 15,000 airmen—live and work in Germany. Turkey, Britain, and Italy each host several thousand soldiers, too. The remaining number in Europe is comprised of small specialized detachments and diplomatic missions; every U.S. embassy in the world has a small Marine Corps detachment and a military attaché.

Nearly all of the U.S. military presence in Asia remains concentrated in two countries—Japan and South Korea. The U.S. Pacific Command keeps about 37,500 troops in South Korea and 47,000 troops in Japan (including Okinawa). Another few thousand troops are scattered around the Pacific, including a sizable Air Force detachment on Guam and a U.S. Army chemical weapons disposal detachment on Johnston Island.

The 1st Armored Division deployed to Iraq shortly after the end of major combat operations in April 2003 and just returned home to Germany after more than a year in combat. The 1st Infantry Division is currently in Iraq, approximately halfway through its yearlong tour of duty.

Phillip Carter: “We Have How Many Troops in Europe? (Plus, the skinny on what they do there)”

Let’s talk about the issue of Korea first. Senator Kerry asks why we’re going to remove 12,000 troops “at the very time we are negotiating with North Korea — a country that really has nuclear weapons.” North Korea is also a country that really has 22 million people, facing a “neighbor” to the south with a population of 48 million people. It’s been known for decades that our troops there are a mere “tripwire” force, meant as a commitment to defend the South, but of no real impact on a peninsula of 70 million people. To me, 25,000 troops serve that purpose just as well as 37,500. And if you’re negotiating to try and resolve the matter, how is ratcheting down tensions with a limited troop reduction a bad thing?

Moving on to Europe, the two remaining Army divisions on that continent are the vestigial remains of what was once a couple of corps of about six such divisions, deployed for decades to block a potential Soviet attack through the Fulda Gap and into the heart of Western Europe. But even today, those two remaining divisions … mostly aren’t there. As Phil notes, they’ve been deployed to Iraq.

Also unmentioned in Kerry’s speech is the fact not all these European bases will be shut down. Some will retain US troops, but instead of a division, it may be a brigade, like the Stryker brigade now deployed in northern Iraq. A forward deployed unit that can “leap frog” quickly to wherever they are needed. The 1st Armored Division and the 1st Infantry Division don’t deploy anywhere “quickly.” Not unless they are based near a deep water port, with fast Roll-On Roll-Off ships for transport. And that’s not Germany.

The only reason to keep that level of armored forces landlocked in central Europe is to provide some kind of perverse material reassurance to our “NATO commitment” (as well as the sizable economic trickle down from basing large forces in Germany). It’s as if we can only properly discharge our duty to our European allies if we continue to maintain a nearly a quarter of our armed forces on (or near) their soil, even though the threat is 15 years in the grave.

Quite simply, this is a co-dependant relationship in which we are the “enabler.” The American Enterprise Institute says “of the more than 2.5 million personnel nominally under arms in Europe, at most 3 percent are deployable. Roughly 85 percent of U.S. forces are deployable — and sustainable — at any moment.” Three percent. That’s 75,000 troops from the entire European continent, that could be transported, deployed and then supported in the field. About one half what we’ve currently got in Iraq.

We shouldered more than our share of the burden of defending Western Europe for a very long time, measured in years or measured in treasury. That “need” has long passed. And it is long past time that our European allies prepared themselves for the coming century.

European armed forces are by definition 97% defensive in nature, because they can’t project that force beyond their national borders (another reason our troops should leave … because theirs can’t). But I believe there will come a time, likely before 2010, when one of them will have to “project force,” alone or as part of a coalition. And at that time, assuming they maintain the same “deployment level” they do today, they’ll be glad that we have established those new bases in Central Asia, around the Persian Gulf, and in the Horn of Africa. Because, at the very least, they’ll likely need our airlift capability and those bases, to fulfill any mission of “national defense” that requires projecting force outside their borders.

Alliances work both ways.

The world has reach a place where the US is nearly the sole Projector of Force. It sounds so imperial. But as we’ve all seen time and again, the threats to your country rarely originate within your borders. You must be able to track them down with something more than a map and a clipboard.

Right now, we’re almost the only country that can do that with any real effectiveness.

In some ways it goes back to the days of the Barbary Pirates, which offer an instructive tale for today:

In his autobiography Jefferson wrote that in 1785 and 1786 he unsuccessfully “endeavored to form an association of the powers subject to habitual depredation from them. I accordingly prepared, and proposed to their ministers at Paris, for consultation with their governments, articles of a special confederation.” Jefferson argued that “The object of the convention shall be to compel the piratical States to perpetual peace.” Jefferson prepared a detailed plan for the interested states. “Portugal, Naples, the two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Denmark and Sweden were favorably disposed to such an association,” Jefferson remembered, but there were “apprehensions” that England and France would follow their own paths, “and so it fell through.” [...] Jefferson’s plan for an international coalition foundered on the shoals of indifference and a belief that it was cheaper to pay the tribute than fight a war.

When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli’s demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States [...] In fact, it was not until the second war with Algiers, in 1815, that naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the United States. European nations continued annual payments until the 1830s.

So the disagreement between America and Europe over how best to handle these things goes way way back. As was the case 200 years ago, each nation must ultimately do what it thinks is in its own best interest … and sometimes the actions of one end up ultimately benefiting the others who opposed them.

I’m just sorry this has turned into a political football. Is the topic important and worthy of discussion? Certainly. But not in terms of red versus blue. And that’s sadly the knee jerk tone of our times. The seriousness of the topic is quickly drowned out and chewed up by the partisan war-room-news-cycle machine of our times.

But I’ll do the best I can to play along. The guy who wants to keep armored divisions in Central Europe to appease old alliances rather than transform the military to face the threats of this century is a bit like the guy who won’t buy a TiVo because then he’d have to disconnect his beloved Betamax, and with it, his vintage porn collection.

Sometimes you have to move on. For your own good.