Three Perspectives On Withdrawing U.S. Troops

TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2012

Posted by Alex Kingsbury on Monday, June 20, 2011

Harvard University Professor Stephen Walt talks about the U.S. global military footprint during hour one June 20, 2011. (Alex Kingsbury/WBUR)

Mayors from across the country are asking Congress to bring American troops home and divert war spending to domestic projects. But what does shrinking the military footprint really mean?

We asked three of the nation’s top national security thinkers.

Fewer troops, safer nation?

The Cato Institute’s Christopher Preble argued that a smaller military budget and fewer overseas commitments could paradoxically make us a safer nation, by nudging our allies to improve their own defense capabilities.

“I just don’t think it makes sense for Americans to subsidize the defense of Europeans who are more than capable of defending themselves,” he said. “In many ways, the U.S. presence in those countries [Japan and South Korea] has discouraged them from doing so.”

Closing foreign bases doesn’t save money

But re-deployments alone are no panacea. Harvard’s Stephen Walt said that anyone looking to save money by shuttering bases is in for a surprise.

“You can’t save money by slogans like ‘bring the troops home,’” he said. “Fighting wars is expensive. But just having troops deployed overseas in places, like Japan, is not all that expensive. We would be paying those troops the same amount if they were stationed in Kansas.”

Shrinking the size of the standing military force is the only way to save money, Walt said.

Cut strategically

But Rachel Kleinfeld, the co-founder of the Truman Security Project, which advocates for a strong national defense towards achieving progressive goals, warned that taking a heavy axe to the DOD budget could have unintended consequences.

“There’s a real need for some of our security spending,” she argued. “We’re deployed in an awful lot of countries where there is room to cut…But if we cut some of our 50,000 troops in Germany, we lose base hospitals. So that affects how many soldiers we can deploy in Afghanistan.”

“You don’t want to cut too much,” Kleinfeld said, pointing to British embarrassment after budget cuts there meant that their military unable to conduct operations in Libya without major U.S. assistance. “There’s a balance that needs to be struck,” she said.

keith

So we bring the troops home and demobilize a significant portion of them. In so doing, we dump thousands of admittedly highly trained men and women onto an already strained job market. Won’t that push unemployment even higher?

Gotitdonethat

no not if the fed government would take even a portion of the billions of monthly spending and spend it here in the US, which in turn would make others feel “safer” about spending their money and eventually turn the shitty ass economy around! Israel doesnt seem to be doing so bad since their getting 8 MILLION PER DAY in USA funding! Geee I wish our own country would do that for its’ own people….you would think they would…but NOPE! ……Leave it to the states, the Fed is on their own agenda!

American Exceptionalism

There always has to be a nation willing to enforce it’s will on all the others. And we’re always right and we know it. Anyone who doubts this is a terrorist. If W administration had not gone through all the trouble of concocting reasons to attack Iraq, we would never have been able to create all the terrorists we have over there, because it’s a fact there were no terrorists before we invaded. And of course anyone who dared to resist our occupation is a terrorist certainly worthy of torture. Without all those terrorists how could we justify spending 100 bil + a month on our National Offense. Although as in many other corporate entities, most of this money is funneled to very few at top, still there are a lot of American jobs involved. As far as the civilians that die for high crime of being in wrong place at wrong time – you have to break some eggs for an omelet- most of’em are godless Arabs anyway. We also rely on selling our weapons to many other markets. Have to keep stoking the fires- It’s the American way.
American Exceptionalism

There always has to be a nation willing to enforce it’s will on all the others. And we’re always right and we know it. Anyone who doubts this is a terrorist. If W administration had not gone through all the trouble of concocting reasons to attack Iraq, we would never have been able to create all the terrorists we have over there, because it’s a fact there were no terrorists before we invaded. And of course anyone who dared to resist our occupation is a terrorist certainly worthy of torture. Without all those terrorists how could we justify spending 100 bil + a month on our National Offense. Although as in many other corporate entities, most of this money is funneled to very few at top, still there are a lot of American jobs involved. As far as the civilians that die for high crime of being in wrong place at wrong time – you have to break some eggs for an omelet- most of’em are godless Arabs anyway. We also rely on selling our weapons to many other markets. Have to keep stoking the fires- It’s the American way.
Bmaguire

One of the ways to bring troops home and not cause more unemployment is to buy property along the Mexican border and set up bases there instead of in Germany and Spain etc.
http://www.info-do.org/ R Pope

If we bring “our troops home” does this mean our ground forces? The proponents of redeployment to the US talk about Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, and Korea, but what about our Navy? Should they be out of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gild and patrolling for pirates of of East Africa? If we do bring our Navy home, how can we justify the cost of Carriers, subs and line ships sitting in port? If the answer is the Navy can forward deploy, then why would we not forward deploy ground base assets as well?
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/3ETFGMQ3B7VD4AAMILBBEVMCWE JasonA

The US has been on a war footing since Dec 8th, 1941. It is high time to end this nonsense.
Michaeldifani

As LA Times columnist Doyle McManus wrote on 6-23-’11, “The Long Goodbye”, “The administration of GW Bush hoped to turn the war-wracked country into a rapidly modernizing democracy” as was promoted before the invasion in March, ’03. Now we have very limited goals. Is it now the time to get out of the Mideast, as the Brits and the French did decades ago? Alexander, the Mongols, the British and the Russians found out the very hard way that Afghanistan is the “graveyard of empires”….