I spent the majority of my seven years in U.S. Army in what was then West Germany. First it was in Crailsheim, whose Army base closed in 1994. Then I spent time at a kaserne with few amenities outside the sleepy little town of Schwabach when it first became operational; that facility would remain in operation for only another dozen years before it was shutdown. I also spent two years in Augsburg; I had requested being stationed there because I had heard that it was one of better posts to be at in Germany. But as they say, the best place to be in the Army is between the place you’re leaving and the place you’re going to. Germany was a beautiful country to look at, but as far as interactions with the locals, I just had to make sure I had enough Deutschmarks in my wallet when I made purchases in town.
When I left the service to go back to school, there was still nearly one-quarter million U.S. service members stationed in Germany; the first significant drawdowns began during the first Bush administration in 1989, and it was across the board, not just in Germany, in response to end of what we can probably call the first “cold war” and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact. Yet it is still frankly astonishing just how few troops there are in Germany today, and Donald Troop wants to decrease troop strength even more, to one-tenth the former deployment when I was last there.
Reports now are that the Pentagon, whose opinion about anything military Trump does not seem to respect or care to know about, is groveling before his feet. Do the Joint Chiefs of Staff really want to pull another 12,000 troops out of Germany? Do they care that much that Germany is not paying 2 percent of its GDP on military defense? No, because first of all the U.S. presence in Germany was never a “choice” the Germans had; the U.S. decided unilaterally to maintain a large force there under the guise of NATO because American generals preferred commanding American troops over that of other countries, and having a large contingent of U.S. troops allowed them to call most of the shots. The fewer troops the U.S. has in NATO, the less say it has about its operations. And believe me, when I was there the leadership really did impress upon the common soldier that the “threat” was “serious.”
But then again, under Trump the U.S. is losing everywhere, and not just because Trump fears to use U.S. military strength, but because entities that the U.S. needs to a show of force against tend to be his “friends,” such as any tin-pot dictator in the world he wishes he could be like—unless, of course, it is the president of Venezuela, because he’s a “socialist.”
Defense Secretary Mark Esper, meanwhile, admits that moving troops out of Germany and relocating them will take years and cost billions—and if Trump loses the election it might not even happen at all. Let’s remember what this is about: Trump has poor relations with virtually every European head of state, save in countries like Hungary which have anti-democratic autocrats that find in Trump a kindred spirit; his only real “friend” in NATO is Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, and we know what that is all about. His antagonism toward Angela Merkel is well-documented, and petty vindictiveness seems to be the real reason behind the move. Pentagon officials admit that where the troops will be relocated in Europe will not be dependent on whether a country is paying their 2 percent. Belgium and Italy pay even less a percent on defense than Germany, yet they are slated to receive some of those troops.
Trump’s foreign policy moves tend to make no sense on any level, and abandoning our European allies only provides further inducement for Vladimir Putin to meddle and regain the “glory” of the old Soviet empire; under the circumstances, central and eastern Europe are the more ideal locations to station reduced troop strength, regardless of Putin’s “hurt feelings.” Even most Republicans seem mystified by Trump “philosophy” in conducting foreign affairs, with his dealings with Iran and North Korea seemingly without point or aimed at any strategic advantage for the U.S.; Trump always seems to start some foreign adventure as a personal publicity stunt, then gets bored with it, and forgets about it. Foreign leaders are confused about what Trump’s ultimate goals are; note too that under the Trump regime the U.S. has not been a party to a single major international agreement—only reneging on the ones that we are in.
Meanwhile, this country’s standing in the world deteriorates, nobody trusts us or believes we mean what we say. Or at least what Trump says or does, and hopefully not for too much longer, before it is too late for this country to recover its international standing and credibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment