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Down-Sizing U.S Bases Abroad Essential As Allies Grow Strong

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 21, 2008

The United States deploys far too many troops in too many places around the world. More worrisome to taxpayers are its plans to keep huge numbers of troops in distant, quiet outposts forever.

When President Bush announced in 2004 that he was going to bring 70,000 troops home from Europe and Asia over 10 years, we criticized him for taking so long. Now he has slowed the sluggish schedule even further, and plans to leave 40,000 more soldiers in Germany and Italy than previously announced.
Military leaders say high troop levels are needed to reassure our allies. They're also concerned that U.S. bases are not yet ready to house all the returning troops.

As for nervous allies, it's time our wealthy friends shouldered a bit more of the load. And as for housing, with the U.S. construction industry in a major slowdown, now would be a perfect time to put Americans to work expanding and improving U.S. bases long neglected.
Military experts are right about the advantages of forward deployments. There is no substitute for military strength. But economic realities of a slowing economy, falling dollar and rising public debt mean the military should be constrained by sensible limits.

No one disputes that big bases in Germany are good sites to train foreign troops, hospitalize soldiers hurt in Iraq and project power eastward. The question is, how big is big enough?

Currently some 490,000 military service members are serving in various posts around the world, reports the American Forces Press Service. Large contingents are in Germany, Italy, Japan and South Korea, countries that together nearly match the size of the U.S. economy.

The European Union now has a GDP bigger than ours. Why should it look to the United States for its defense? Military welfare, like any welfare, is addictive.

Consider South Korea, a major industrial power bordering the impoverished communist state of North Korea. An editorial in South Korea's largest newspaper recently summarized the security challenges. "... Monitoring signs of a sudden North Korean attack, identifying and striking North Korea's long-range artillery and 100,000 special forces troops, monitoring the movement of nuclear weapons, defending against biological and chemical weapons, and protecting strategic facilities against missile attacks ... Just one of those duties requires huge amounts of military equipment. And a vast amount of capital will be required to buy it."

Unsaid is the reality that the less our allies have to spend on defense, the more they can spend on domestic needs such as highways, schools, retirement benefits and health care.

The United States also has unmet domestic needs and has been borrowing heavily from many of the same nations we spend so much to defend.

America must maintain the world's strongest military, and U.S. forces must be hard-hitting and mobile. The nation's defense requires some foreign bases, and not all troops can come home. But many thousands of them can, and sooner rather than later.

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