Time for big cuts in the military? Could we start closing America's 800 military bases overseas?

Great Debates
1

From The Hill:

This was a part of the cold war build up. Over 194 bases in Germany, 121 in Japan, and 83 in S. Korea. Wouldn’t a couple do in each? Or none, they are still our allies.

Trump has raised the same concerns, not sure if he’s ever sincere or serious on anything he says though. Others want to do this including Democrats. Seems like this is something they could work together on.

Costs of these bases with troops abroad are estimated at over $150 billion a year. If $150 billion a year, we have another $850 billion more to go to get a balanced budget. That’s a start.

Then we could work on other areas in the military such as this.

Or whadda ya got?

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Quote: “Today, rapid response forces can deploy to virtually any region fast enough to be based in the continental United States.”

That’s only for units like long-range bombers such as B-2 (which would still need mid-air refueling from tankers in some place like Hawaii or Alaska, I think, to hit a place such as Pyongyang when deploying out of Whiteman AFB in Missouri), or for units such as Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) which would take weeks to deploy to a theater halfway around the globe.

For some situations, there is no substitute for being right next door. If the Korean Peninsula went hot, for instance, there are currently U.S. forces that could respond within hours or minutes. That is not something you could get without U.S. forces being, in…well, South Korea itself.

Secondly, as for the F-35 program, there is zero chance it will be canceled. It’s already been in development for decades and the warplanes have already entered operating service with numerous nations, not just America. There is no chance whatsoever that it will be axed.

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I think the counts in the article are misleading as hell. 194 bases in Germany? Maybe 194 facilities, but not ‘bases’ as we know them. From what I can tell, the ‘bases’ in Germany are kind of like the colleges at Oxford or Cambridge, and are scattered through the cities/areas they’re located in, but often combined under one central authority. So are there 30 something colleges at Oxford, or is there one University of Oxford? Same thing for US Army Garrison Stuttgart - is it one base, or is it the Patch Barracks, Robinson Barracks, Panzer Kaserne, Kelley Barracks, and Stuttgart Army Airfield? Note that in the continental US, all that would have been rolled into one physical facility in most cases, but not always? How many bases are there in San Antonio? Is it just Joint Base - San Antonio, or is it Lackland AFB, Randolph AFB, Fort Sam Houston, Kelly Field, Camp Bullis, etc…?

Beyond that, like Velocity said, it’s still important to do things like forward base troops/equipment. You can’t just throw a brigade combat team on some planes and get them there overnight; there’s too much stuff even for an infantry BCT to do that in a timely fashion. Plus, once you manage to land all that stuff, you have to organize it and road march it to where it would actually be deployed to fight, which also takes time. By forward basing troops in say… Germany, you have them a LOT closer to NATO allies threatened by the Russians, such as Poland, the Baltics, etc… As a matter of fact, in the Cold War era, they found it advantageous to actually pre-position whole divisions worth of equipment in Europe and merely fly the personnel of the divisions to Europe in case of emergency. It would take weeks or even months to deploy from the continental US for anything but an airmobile/airborne division, as first you have to get the equipment to a nearby port by rail, sail the ships to wherever they go, put the equipment back on rail cars, drive the trains to where they’re going, unload it, then road march to the actual deployment positions. Having bases overseas means that only the last four stages (put it on rail cars, take it where it’s going, unload it and road march) are necessary, while the slower steps of transporting your stuff and people through the US, loading it onto ships, and sailing it to a different continent is avoided.

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Yeah, somethings not adding up, I suspect you’re right. Here’s wiki’s take, it shows 34 army bases in Germany.

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When I do a google with this: How many bases does America have in Germany? The first one is Quartz, and it posts similar numbers to The Hill. The second one listed came from another wiki and it shows 174 bases in Germany: List of United States Army installations in Germany - Wikipedia

I didn’t bring much of an defense myself, let me figure out what they are getting and how they are defining bases before I can even debate the points.

6

There is room for some reduction in the military budget, but closing all overseas bases goes too far.

7

I think it would be a great idea to reduce our military presence overseas. There is no need for American forces to respond within hours of minutes any where outside of the US.

If our allies in Korea were attacked showing up a day later is ok and it is reasonable for them to be responsible for defending themselves for weeks if necessary. The same thing works in Europe. If Russia started invading Estonia the US doesn’t need to be on the front lines in the first 30 minutes that should be Estonia’s job and a day later should be Germany, France and England and if the US shows up a week later that should be acceptable. If the US were attacked directly none of our allies would be there for at least a week either (with obvious exceptions). Its a waste of money to allow the US to flex more power for political reasons.

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The time to move tens of thousands of troops and their equipment to Europe to stop the annexation of the Baltics would be measured in time closer to months, not “Does Thursday work for you?”

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Military forces don’t show up a day later. Or a week later. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, it took the United States five months to build up its forces before we were ready to counter-attack.

In most cases if you don’t have the troops on the scene when the battle begins, the battle will be over before they get there. At that point, you have to decide whether you want to restart the war by launching your own invasion to retake the country that was lost. Or accept the reality that the war is over and you missed your chance.

Withdrawing our troops from Europe and Asia would be telling our allies in those continents that they’re on their own and we won’t be there for them in a crisis. So they should make the best deal they can with Russia or China.

It’s pretty clear which countries benefit from this idea.

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Sure the US. The US invasion of Afghanistan took less than a month we had no bases on the ground. Not a single US ally has bases in the US does that mean that we are on our own? If so then shouldn’t our “allies” be on their own?

Why doesn’t The Philippines have a base in South Korea? They are military allies. Where are Canada’s military bases in Europe? From what I can tell, they both closed around 1993. Does that mean Canada told their allies that “they were on their own and Canada won’t be there for them in a crisis”?

The US doesn’t operate a base in Estonia our ally most likely to be invaded. We help them with construction on one of their bases and several NATO forces rotate through the base. An arrangement like that would make much more sense if we politically need to be there the second the shooting starts.

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I would also ask, how much money would actually be saved merely by “closing bases”? If the troops who were actually stationed at those bases are paid off (and told to get civilian jobs) that’s one thing, but if we just move them (and their tanks and airplanes and so forth) from Germany or Japan to Kentucky or Texas, would that really make all that much of a difference to Uncle Sam’s bottom line?

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That’s because Afghanistan had almost no conventional military to speak of and the Taliban was a small entity.

No ally nations have bases in the United States because the United States is the most secure nation in the world and needs no one’s assistance for defense. It is very different the other way around.

What you just wrote is like a fire department saying, “Citizens don’t have to come help us if something catches on fire here at the fire department, so why should we go help citizens if their houses catch on fire?”

The Philippines has virtually no meaningful military to speak of, not even any fighter jets in its air force.
By the way - a lot of what you have been writing thus far sounds very Trumpish - “why are we helping allies instead of letting them fend for themselves?” Not saying you are a Trumper - I’m sure you’re not - but just saying you’re echoing many of his prior statements just about word for word.

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I think this is the valid question. The question from the OP is somewhat irrelevant as long as we have such a strong Military-Industrial complex, which is baked firmly into our culture and economy. Closing overseas bases because they are not needed any more would result in just shuffling things around because we can’t really “cut” any military spending, can we?

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Right, so when was the last war the US was in that we had bases in the area in advance? Vietnam? Korea? WWII? Being an ally doesn’t mean we stand there guarding them 24/7 it means we come to their aid when necessary. Having bases in Italy so that we can go on military excursions into Africa is a terrible foreign policy.

Since the last time this wasn’t theoretical was WWII. The US was attacked then. Why doesn’t France have a base in Hawaii? Because it’s stupid and the US is on our own is North Korea, Russia or China attacked through the pacific and the other countries will get here in a month or so. That is how normal international relationships work.

Actually, the US isn’t anyone’s fire department and if they are they should collect taxes just like the fire department does. In reality its more like two neighbors who agree if their house catches fire to help put out the blaze. The guy who’s house catches fire has to work on it while he’s waiting for everyone else to show up.

And yet the Philippines is ROK’s closest military ally non US division. They sent troops in the Korean war before the US did.

Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn occasionally. The difference is I want to cut US military spending by 75% and drop the US down to military spending of no more than 2% of GDP.

The US isn’t the world’s policeman and shouldn’t be. If we are going to be the police or the fire department, to use your earlier analogy, we need to act like them and be paid by taxes from those we protect. Its still shitty to have our young men and women dying to protect other countries but I’d be more ok with it.

15

Actually, the German Air Force has a base on Ft Bliss in El Paso TX.

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I believe you are talking about their training center. I’m not aware of them having their own security and checkpoints but I haven’t spent much time on Bliss. I do know that they have been trying to close the training center and move it to Europe due to it being too expensive.

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If this country makes the decision that we don’t want to be the ultimate guarantor of our allies’ security, then a number of things happen as a natural consequence of that policy. First, we can close lots of overseas bases because we won’t need them and we won’t be wanted there. Second, we’d probably see a considerable uptick in the number of countries that pursue or obtain nuclear weapons.

Where the linked article goes wrong is that the authors are people who actually fundamentally agree with the notion that US security guarantees have kept several wars from breaking out, and that being the world’s policeman is part of our role… but we want to do it on the cheap. That doesn’t fly.

Plus, seeing as how our bases are subsidized in several of the countries that are often mentioned, I wouldn’t find it surprising if there was more money to be saved by closing domestic bases than overseas ones. I’m not saying it is certain, but it is plausible.

18

They seemed to show it’s mostly our military being stationed over there that is running up the most costs, about $100 billion. The base closings themselves (still not sure how they are defining it) appear to be about $50 billion for all of them which doesn’t seem like much.

Yeah, the biggest savings would be if they were to get civilian jobs. Not sure what they would plan to do with the equipment. On our side of the globe, we have good neighbors to the north and south of us, not sure what serious threats we have on the homeland that we feel like we have to spend the kind of money that we do on defense each year.

19

So is it sustainable for our economy to continue to spend as much as we are doing on the military and other expenditures, rack up the kind of ridiculous annual deficits we are now getting and the dismal GDP’s we’ve been getting for over a decade now? Are or we setting ourselves up for the same thing that happened to Russia’s economy when they tried to keep up with Reagan’s military build up? Who are we trying to keep up with exactly? Ourselves?

Today Russia spends 3.9% GDP on the military, $61.4 billion in US dollars. US spent 3.2% GDP, $649 billion. Our NATO total defense spending is over a trillion annually. Look how we yield to Russia often, simply because they have nuclear weapons. Will we feel any less safe if we cut our budget in half? How long can we keep this up?

China is another matter altogether and has been building up their defense considerably, second biggest spender now at $250 billion (in US dollars). And they are only spending 1.9% GDP to get that. If they roughly matched our GDP spending, their defense spending would almost match ours now. Their economy has been growing at an insane pace often doubling, tripling or quadrupling America every year quite easily for the last 40 years, compare to how ours has been trickling along compared to the same time span. China has managed to do it with little debt, only 5 trillion (in US dollars), compare that to America at 23 trillion.

It will be a challenge if we can ever break 3.0% GDP ever again, even more remarkable if we did it without another trillion dollar debt being added to the deficit, those days may be gone for a very, very long time. Don’t think we ever fully recovered from the last housing and mortgage crisis.

At the pace China is going, this is the year they may overtake us as the biggest economy according to the Business Insider. This is basing it on a combination of purchasing-power-parity-exchange rates and GDP. Using the PPP alone, it said they are already considered the world’s largest economy, but says on a nominal basis the US remains in the lead.

Next decade, we will fall much further behind, and India will also overtake us. According to their chart, by 2030, six of the 10 largest economies could be in Asia.

China hasn’t ever been as land hungry as Russia, but once they get up to speed, think we will be in a position to have a chance to keep Taiwan separate from them any longer? Let’s hope that’s all they want.

I gave up on the definition of military bases for now, got sidetracked. If somebody or military man knows how they are defining it, and can explain the discrepancies, hope they will explain it.

Wiki’s Top 15 military by country

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We have troops overseas to project power, to send a warning to countries like Russia and China that there could be severe consequences for invading an ally - with troops overseas, those consequences are obvious.

Take the troops away, and you’re encouraging Russian and Chinese aggression. You’re encouraging other powers to fill a power vacuum. Worse, if the United States doesn’t intend to create a power vacuum but Russia and China perceives that we do, that’s how wars start.