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Is it America’s Fate to Remain a European Power?
Wess Mitchell, director of research at The Center for European Policy Analysis, writes that the EU’s largest states are more interested in avoiding a rupture with Moscow than in protecting the vital interests of the Unions eastern members. Therefore, the United States should announce its intention to transfer the entire Europe-based American military establishment to new locations in Central Europe: Atlantic Community: “How America Should Respond to Resurgent Russia
One commenter suggested that the US troops should not move eastward from Old Europe to New Europe, but should rather move west, as in to the United States as an incentive for Europeans to take their own security more seriously.
I found Wess Mitchell’s response interesting:
I’m sympathetic to your view. However, I believe that if we were to withdraw our forces from Europe altogether, as for example Stephen Walt argues in a recent book, a future generation of U.S. leaders would have to send them right back. They can stay as a preventative or return as a corrective; either way, it is our fate to remain a European power.
That being the case, I’d rather stay. But if we’re going to do that, let’s use the forces we have there more wisely. As Ron Asmus points out in an oped in today’s Wall Street Journal “NATO’s Hour”, we’ve resisted permanently redeploying U.S. military assets to the east in the period since the Cold War on the logic that this act of self-restraint would be seen as a confidence-building move in Moscow. As he points out, this logic no longer applies.
Is that still the case? Is it really America’s fate to remain a “European power”?
Do you agree with Wess Mitchell’s thesis that US troops would be forced to return to Europe as a corrective, if they do not stay as a preventative?
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Marlowecan
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Marlowecan
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Joerg
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Marlowecan
