[The] primary purpose of U.S. forces in Europe today is to build interoperability and military capability within and among America’s most capable and most likely future coalition partners through security cooperation activities like exercises and training events.
I guess I didn't realize that there was a lot of support for the notion that dropping our troop levels in Europe would scare Europeans into doing more. I thought pushing the Russians east of Belarus pretty much made that obviously wrong. Perhaps I don't spend enough time studying theoretical models of state behavior.
Nine years ago, I set forth my reasons for keeping a robust Army presence in Europe. One thing that isn't popular to mention is the main reason we want to build interoperability with our NATO allies. That is, we may need to use that capability in a war. And Europe-based troops and bases are a forward launching pad into that arc of crisis from West Africa to Central Asia that seems to have been so untidy since I mentioned it in that article.
Heck, we've even scheduled one tidying mission for next year. Just a little one, mind you. Would that all wars were so convenient.
Yes, I know, war is receding. It always seems to be doing that until one day, pow, we find ourselves at war or facing a deadly threat that requires war.
That's why, after a decade of irregular warfare, we are trying to "rebalance" our Army to fight conventional battles, too. That capability has atrophied as the price we had to pay to win the wars we were in. And seeing what conventional combat requires is quite the shock to our combat-experienced leaders:
As fewer American combat brigades are required for service in Afghanistan, and none for Iraq, more of these units are being retrained for more conventional combat (against an enemy with similar weapons and tactics). This has come as a bit of a shock to commanders and NCOs who have spent most of the last decade specializing in irregular combat against Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If our troops are to teach NATO allies to operate at our side, we need to know how to operate in high intensity conventional warfare again, no?
And we do need to be good at conventional war. That's why I haven't wanted our troops to specialize in counter-insurgency at the expense of conventional war. I'd rather the shock come at our National Training Center than in the first battle of the next war. We adapted to counter-insurgency and still won in Iraq. Setbacks in conventional war are not nearly as forgiving and are far more dramatic in impact.
It really is true we go to war with the armies we have and not the armies we wish we had. So let's make sure that our Army and our NATO allies' armies are the armies we wish to have.
