Rebasing The Military In Europe

This kind of serves as a good follow-on to my last post about the problems facing the EU economy. There is now bipartisan talk (link requires registration) of a foreign base committee to determine which overseas bases should be closed, consolidated, or moved. Simultaneously, we have Romania and Bulgaria talking at length about the benefits of basing a large chunk of the US military force in Europe in those two countries.

Germany may just be about to find out how damaging their collaboration with France could be. With their economy already on the brink of disaster, the removal of the US military - and it's economic boost - may be a crushing blow to their recovery.

Is the time right to pull out wholesale from Germany? Probably not. A slow draw down may be what is needed as we don't want to devastate them on the way out. But I see a withdrawal from Germany in the works.

Strategically, Germany isn't as important as it was during the Cold War. The threats have moved south and east. Bulgaria and Romania are better positioned to counter these threats. Plus they are politically more friendly than the current government in Berlin. Moving the bases makes sense.

It'll be a sad day when the last American forces leave Germany, but it's time to face the new geopolitical reality: Germany just isn't as important as they once were.