America should cut its military commitment to defend Europe in order to focus on Asia? America already did that! What's left to pull out? Our military cemeteries there? Leaving Europe is such a bad idea for American security that I can't believe the notion persists.
As the political scientist Michael Mazarr recently wrote in Foreign Affairs (“Why America Still Needs Europe,” April 17), significantly downgrading the United States’ defense commitments in Europe would “validate the grim picture that China and Russia now paint of a United States that is pitilessly self-interested and transactional, and would severely undermine the United States’ painstaking attempts to build a reputation as that rare great power that offers something to the world other than naked ambition.”
This is a common refrain among those who believe that any meaningful U.S. military drawdown from Europe—most likely involving other states stepping up to shoulder the lion’s share of the defense burden—would sever U.S. ties with the continent and even the world. Pulling back, they argue, is prohibitively risky, would save little money, and could destroy broader cooperation between the United States and Europe.
Second, America has a great and enduring interest in keeping Europe out of enemy hands.
Third, if you want a meaningful American military drawdown from Europe:
[If] you think America shouldn't need nearly as much military power to defend Europe from Russia compared to when the threat was the USSR, well ... mission accomplished!
At the height of the Cold War America had lots of troops in Europe with large numbers of tanks, artillery, and aircraft. In the seas around Europe, the American Navy roamed to contain the Soviet navy and keep lines of supply from North America to Europe intact. America's troop level in Europe--even with enhancements to reassure NATO allies while Russia is at war with Ukraine--is a tiny fraction of Cold War commitments. Compare the 100,000+ American troops in Europe now--up from 80,000 in the month before Russia invaded this year--to the 450,000+ Americans in Europe in 1959, the peak year of troop strength there.
I do appreciate that the author criticized in that initial article had a chance to reply. I'll settle for one quote from him reflecting my point made just above:
Their argument does not acknowledge the fact that Washington has already shifted to a “supporting role” in Europe. At the peak of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States had over 400,000 personnel in Europe, and as late as the mid-1980s, it had over 300,000. In 2021, there were about 60,000. By contrast, non-U.S. NATO members in 2021 fielded over 1.9 million military personnel, including over 500,000 active-duty forces from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom alone. Nor are the U.S. expenditures as onerous as the authors imply; the direct cost of U.S. forces in Europe—between $30 billion and $40 billion according to IISS—was roughly a tenth of what other NATO members collectively spent on defense in 2022. The United States’ post-Cold War presence in Europe has therefore already seen a “meaningful drawdown.”.
Exactly.
Europe is clearly an economy-of-force front compared to the priority Asia front. And America's military footprint already reflect that reality. What more should America do to satisfy the seemingly endless desire by some to walk away from Europe?
I don't take reassurances that of course Europe will step up to defend Europe from Russia which may be able to bully a Europe that has too few nuclear weapons. If we are wrong about this soothing assumption and pull out our few combat formations still in Europe, we'll find we need much, much more to liberate Europe.
What might China do while America is recovering what it fought to achieve and then defend since 1944?
And it might even be worse than a Russian conquest if the "Europe" that steps up to stop Russia in the absence of an American-led NATO turns out to be the proto-imperial European Union that finally rips out that troublesome prefix with nobody to resist the Eurocrats. We'll pretend they are allies and lose even the chance of recapturing Europe.
Leaving Europe is a bad idea for America.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
