Eh? We reduced our Army forces there by more than half, three divisions in Germany went away by 1995, and USAFE quite a bit too by the time Rumsfeld became SECDEF again in 2001. I think Rumsfeld just got better press for his efforts.
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What deficit reduction looks like..?
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Eh? We reduced our Army forces there by more than half, three divisions in Germany went away by 1995, and USAFE quite a bit too by the time Rumsfeld became SECDEF again in 2001. I think Rumsfeld just got better press for his efforts.
If there's one thing the last 10 years should have taught us it's that "long term presence" isn't something we should be trying to do.
If we need long term presence, I'd almost rather it be built from stateside, even reserve forces, so that it takes deliberative action for it to go forward.
The US should not be party to extended anything overseas. I'm all about airstrikes and raids, but 10 years of boots on the ground in two countries hasn't bought us anything we couldn't have done in the first few months if we'd done it properly.
AMEN Bro! All I heard after we bailed out on the SVietnamese in '75, was "We'll never let that happen again"! Well guess what?
At least we had some positive outcome in SVN (economy, standard of living... optomism, etc.), but little hope for that in Iraq & the 'Stan will never change.
BzB
I read a book some time back called Rethinking the Principles of War. Basically its a collection of essays by experts on the subject of warfare and statecraft.
One of the first essays really made an impression on me, I think it was called 'An American Way of War?' The author examines about a dozen (cant remember exactly how many) aspects of American war making some positive some negative. Two that stick out in my mind are 1.) Logistically Excellent, and 2.) Culturally ignorant (or something similar).
It made an impression because in the essay the author makes the argument that when we decide to wage war we do so with great efficiency, superior logistical support, etc. Essentially we are really good at the fighting part, but we are absolutely terrible at fully understanding the social environment we are about to enter. Vietnam and our current experience in the Middle East I think are pretty good supporting examples.
Granted I haven't deployed to the area, so my experience is based solely off what I have read, but it seems to me we have had to learn the hard way that you cant just invade a country and expect things to just fall in place for you, even if you win every single firefight.
One of the first essays really made an impression on me, I think it was called 'An American Way of War?' The author examines about a dozen (cant remember exactly how many) aspects of American war making some positive some negative. Two that stick out in my mind are 1.) Logistically Excellent, and 2.) Culturally ignorant (or something similar).
It made an impression because in the essay the author makes the argument that when we decide to wage war we do so with great efficiency, superior logistical support, etc. Essentially we are really good at the fighting part, but we are absolutely terrible at fully understanding the social environment we are about to enter. Vietnam and our current experience in the Middle East I think are pretty good supporting examples.
Granted I haven't deployed to the area, so my experience is based solely off what I have read, but it seems to me we have had to learn the hard way that you cant just invade a country and expect things to just fall in place for you, even if you win every single firefight.
From my days on the Army Staff in the mid-90s, they considered "presence" to be a mission that had 4 distinct components:
1) Influence
2) Assurance
3) Deterrence
4) Crisis response
I think you can still argue that our presence in Europe (and Japan, and Sout Korea, and everywhere else) has elements of these 4 mission aspects. Could we "do it" purely from stateside? Probably, but with diminshed aspects of the four principles; at some point there is a cut line below which the pain threshhold says it's better to keep some element of forces forward. Where that cut line is seems to be the real heart of the debate.
Yeah thats it. Good book.