Stop subsidizing Europe and pull our Combat Brigades out and bring them home. Defense experts complain that Europe should be spending more on defense. The Europeans complain that we spend too much.
Lets make this simple adjustment, get Europe from behind the US shield and watch our allies shoulder more of the burden. This story is via Military .com but even though the Obama Administration is calling for fewer cuts, you can bet that budget reality will make this low hanging fruit.
Want to really save money? Pull everyone back (the allies complain about US troops on their soil...well everyone but S. Korea and maybe Australia...if we ever get that base built in the Northern Territories). World wide.
Read the whole thing but this is the operative paragraph...and from a Republican no less. Shameful.
In a recent letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar warned that the withdrawals could undermine European security and the sense among NATO allies that the U.S. is committed to Europe.I mean seriously. European security. Not US security but European security?! Time for him to find a new job.
Have you completely forgotten about NATO?
ReplyDeleteNATO is irrelevant and a relic of the cold war. its quite obvious that it no longer works and with the dramatic down turn in European defense spending its time to stop subsidizing there defense.
ReplyDeletei'm not saying fuck the Europeans but instead telling them to do it for themselves.
US Army heavy armor units/Combat Brigades and USAF tactical nukes B-61's should go home.
ReplyDeleteSP AFB closed, their A-10C's should move to AV AFB, LN AFB (USAFE) or back to CONUS.
Keep Ramstein AFB and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center open.
Solomon, many greetings from Germany! ;-)
Ummm Sol, what about those bases in Europe that directly contribute to your defence? I'm thinking for example of the Ballistic Missile Radar at Fylingdales in the UK.
ReplyDeleteAnd the thing is, most Europeans don't see the need to invest in our armed forces, it's not because they see the US as being there instead its that they don't see a threat. The US pulling out wont change that, sadly the only thing that seems to work is a war that directly affects European nations. The last proper example is probably the Falklands where UK sovereign territory was invaded and we realised the need for our forces. The others are so far away or have so little relevance to ordinary citizens that it makes no difference to them.
Oh, and Sol, I really wish you'd stop lumping all of Europe and the 500 million of us who live there into one group. I totally agree we should be spending more in the UK. I'd love to see a proper replacement for our carrier force without a 10 year gap, or a decent number of FJs left in the RAF, so that somewhere down the line when i'm on the ground and need some support from the Navy or RAF they can actually provide it, because the UK govt. wont stop sending its army away just because of a little thing like not having the resources to perform properly.
At the same time I should also point out that the UK is also withdrawing from European bases in Germany, so I agree that you could probably draw down quite a few army bases, but the Air force and Navy ones are a little different, i'd argue that they have much greater value in being prepositioned. Unless you only want airstrikes to come from carriers or massively wasteful long range B2 flights then i'd keep a few European bases dotted about. It'd make the airbridge to Afghan a lot easier too.