Monday Mudballing...30 Jan 2012

I was reading this article from the Washington Post this morning and it has me thinking about a number of issues.

Dependents Overseas

The Army took the first hit but the tidbit from the referenced article has me wondering...

There are about 80,000 U.S. service members stationed in Europe, along with more than 200,000 family members and civilian employees.

The savings that will be realized by removing the overhead of dependents and civilian employees from overseas locations could and should be realized world wide by the US military.  It should be a USMC, USN and USAF imperative too.  That one move alone should save a tremendous amount of money.  Additionally it should allow bases to be consolidated or even shut down.  This is an obvious, uncontroversial move that should be implemented immediately.  Oh and I'm mainly looking at you USAF---shut down those European air bases!

US and European views of each other

This was predicatable but still eye opening...

In Washington, the long-held “vision of Europe is that there’s a bunch of reasonably rich countries, relatively lazy, and not standing up for American-initiated missions abroad as much as they should,” he said.
In contrast, Eide said, resentment and opposition to the U.S.-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan has reduced popular backing for NATO among many Western European countries. “NATO was identified simply as the organization that takes away our sons and daughters and sends them to faraway places to do nation-building in the desert.”

It won't happen but NATO is dead as an institution.  It is incapable of projecting power in a unified way and would be hard pressed to defend itself from a determined enemy.    We all focus on the equipment to fight wars but discount the will to fight.  I wonder if Europe still has the will (talking about its people, not its military) and they think that we're cowboys that gallop around the world imposing our will.  Like a bad marriage, we need a divorce.

Defense Budgets

Label this sad, but predictable...

U.S. and NATO officials fret that the cutbacks will further erode military weaknesses that were exposed during last year’s air war in Libya. Several European countries quickly ran out of munitions and had to order them on an emergency basis from Washington. European militaries also lacked capability to refuel their own planes or conduct adequate surveillance from the air.
“If there ever was a time in which the United States could always be counted on to fill the gaps that may emerge in European defense, that time is rapidly coming to an end,” Ivo Daalder, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, told reporters in Washington last month.
At the same time, Europe’s austere economic outlook is leading to a “further weakening of the core ability to defend ourselves,” said Norwegian Defense Minister Espen Barth Eide.
Oil-rich Norway is an exception to the trend; it is increasing its defense budget. But Europe’s overall economic woes are exacerbating existing tensions within NATO, Eide said in a recent speech at the Center for Security and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

We live in interesting times.

I can't wait to see how this turns out but if we suffer one more economic shock, I can see the US fully divesting itself of Europe, turning to the Pacific and not looking back.