The U.S.A. would love to have no troops stationed in Europe. Unfortunately Europeans don’t trust themselves enough to realistically let that happen. If one looks at European history it is easy to understand why.
Europe has started every world war. Without American intervention in Serbia its hard to say where that would have gone. Some would like to let Europe and its issues burn themselves out instead of intervening in the future.
Basing U.S. forces in Europe is costly. If the United States were to get them all out of Europe Germany might feel free to re-arm itself as best it can and just kick any malcontents into the gutter. ..some would think of opening concentration camps with free train rides for the recently homeless. The United States could watch. It would be like reality T.V. or almost as good.
Europeans are such nice people though that they would never think of increasing their nuclear weapons infrastructure. They could sign some kind of mutual love agreement like Hitler did with Stalin and that would further allow butterflies to fly free in the skies while flowers are planted along autobahns.
Russia might be a cheaper place for Americans to base troops in anyway besides being closer to potential Asian conflicts. Maybe some sort of security arrangement could be made with Russia if Americans are booted out of Europe. Then, if there was a need someday to return to Europe U.S. troops wouldn’t have to cross the Atlantic again.
Russia is an entirely manufactured threat to the United States. Europe has invaded Russia numerous while Russia just conquered the Nazis from the eastern approach. The Austria-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia 28 July 1914. The Balkan League including Serbia and Greece wanted to rid the region of Ottoman Empire occupiers of Europe. Germany would have none of that, and Russians supported Christian Orthodox Serbs; sound familiar?
August 1 1914 Germany declared war on Russia.
Suvorov did general around Switzerland back in the time of the Napoleonic Wars of course, yet Napoleon found it convenient to busy himself in Egypt in those days. With a strong German position in the EU today it is natural that the EU finds Russia a problem. Large numbers of recent Muslim immigrants to the EU add to the traditional anti-Russian position of the EU for Russian support of Christian orthodoxy instead of state-run religion such as prevails in Germany.
Russia sold Alaska to the United States to dampen British expansion ambitions a little. The only conflict with Russia the United States has had was the cold war and that ideological contest is over. Europe seems to be the source of ideological conflict with the U.S.A. these days more so than Russia.
Russia with such a small population hasn’t visions of global conquest. They want to keep historical Russia together such as it was before German annexation of Ukraine at Brest-Litovsk. They seek security from Western attack as well as Eastern and Southern attack in addition to hoping not to have nuclear war with the United States, China, or to be struck by a Muslim bomb.
Germany only pays 20% of the cost of U.S. bases. The U.S.A. pays billions and billions for maintaining bases, training troops and building equipment to defrappe war in Europe. The Rand Corporation reported that Germany pays 1 billion dollars annually for bases. The European Deterrence Initiative alone for the U.S.A. is 4.7 billion dollars in 2018. The U.S. defense budget request for 2018 is nearly 700 billion dollars. A huge part of that goes toward Europe related defense spending.
About rearming; Today Germany pays nearly 2% of its economy on defense spending. Nazi Germany in 1938 spent 17% and in 1939 23%. The numbers continued to rise during the war of course.
I am very happy not to have war. My father served in the U.S. Navy four years during the second world war off North Africa. Germany was a bit of a problem back then and caused a few U.S. casualties. I visited Berlin in 1987 and saw the ‘armies waiting to tear one another apart’…the Soviet equipment seemed rusty. My hope as an army reservist was for peace and prosperity yet one trained for war.
Garrison Gibson: books and blog 