On Wednesday November 15th, 2011, US Debt reached the fifteen trillion dollar mark, standing at eighty five percent of GDP. Over the past year, battling the national debt has become the hot political topic, with politicians pointing fingers and economists shaking heads, both parties exasperated with the lack of economic recovery and persistent unemployment. The current crisis has ramifications past economics or even domestic politics however, with implications for foreign policy. American military spending is one of the largest programs on the federal budget. It constitutes forty three percent of global military expenditures and is six times as large as the Chinese military budget, second largest in the world (SIPRI). The time is right for America to cut back military spending and in doing so redefine its foreign policy. One of the ways in which America can do this is by cutting back on military bases in foreign countries, of which it has plenty: over one thousand spread across the globe (Zunes). Through a process known as retrenchment, America can reshape the global spread of these foreign bases into a far more cost-effective form while at the same time encouraging multilateralism.
Currently, America has more than one thousand military bases in foreign countries, scattered throughout the world. Many of these bases are left over from the post-World War II status quo, with 268 in Germany, 124 in Japan, and 87 in South Korea (Zunes). The remaining military bases literally scatter the globe, ranging from the Middle East to Africa to Australia and beyond. Political defenders of these bases argue they are integral parts of ensuring domestic and global security. In reality, scaling back these foreign bases through a process known as retrenchment can heighten security, encourage multilateralism, and reduce costs.
In a recent article in Foreign Policy magazine, contributors Joseph Parent and Paul MacDonald define retrenchment as “shifting commitments and resources from peripheral to core interests and preserving investments in the most valuable geographic and functional areas.” In this post-Cold War era, America’s most important regions of interest are Western Europe and Southeast Asia, the two regions with which America has the most trade (Parent and MacDonald). Out of all the regions in the world, crises in these two areas would affect the US the most. While keeping troops in other non-critical regions may arguably help maintain global peace and stability, it only affects America in an indirect sense. Thus, America should pull back from other areas and focus on maintaining security in Western Europe and Southeast Asia. In terms of defending these regions, it is important to note that they are among the most stable in the world. The mere fact that these regions are major US trading partners hints at their large GDP size; France, Britain, and Japan all ranked among the top six countries with the highest military spending. These countries are quite capable of defending themselves, meaning that it would actually be possible to scale down deployments in these countries without endangering their stability or safety.
Some might argue that it is important to maintain bases and a strong military presence in the Middle East to protect oil and combat terrorism. While these are important strategic interests, it is not clear that the best way to accomplish them is through full scale military deployment. A single seal team accomplished in one night what the entire US armed forces could not do for ten years in killing Osama Bin Laden. Furthermore, the presence of American bases in the Middle East can itself be a destabilizing factor. America should enact a policy of retrenchment, dramatically scaling back its military presence in all areas of the world except Western Europe and Southeast Asia, and even there reducing them to some degree.
Critics of retrenchment charge that it reduces security as the presence of these military bases acts as a deterrent against threats to the United States and the world in general. Such critics argue that forward defenses are the most effective way to deter aggression. Removing them will create vulnerabilities abroad that other factions, groups, or countries may try to exploit. These criticisms are unfounded however; removing foreign military bases will not decrease security and in some cases could actually increase it.
Cutting down the number of foreign military bases operated by the United States will not invite aggression or destabilize the globe. Fewer foreign bases will not change the fact that America by far has the largest military in the world, and could crush any other country. As Parent and MacDonald put it, “the biggest menace to a superpower is not the possibility of belated entry into a regional crisis; it is the temptation of imperial overstretch.” America’s most important allies in Western Europe and Southeast Asia are powerful enough that Russia and China are the only two countries capable of war against them. Realistically, neither is a possibility. The Russian economy is failing, and increasingly dependent on Western consumption of oil and gas (a quarter of their GDP), which would stop in the case of war (Goldstone). China is still a massively export driven economy; should they declare war America would simply stop buying Chinese products. While prices would rise, the Western World is affluent enough that it can buy oil and manufactured products elsewhere. Nowhere else in the world can match Western consumption of those products, so a break in trade would devastate Russia and China while only mildly affecting the West.
In reality, the superfluous number of foreign bases in so many other countries detracts from global security, rather than adding to it. American military bases in dictatorial regimes such as Yemen or Uzbekistan become rallying points for political dissent and targets for aggression. Specifically, the presence of American troops near the Muslim holy sites of Medina and Mecca in Saudi Arabia was one of the reasons Bin Laden cited for 9/11 and his war against the West (BBC News). In addition to increasing security, retrenchment has one other main advantage: it will reduce costs. Parent and MacDonald estimate that “US forces in the European theater could safely be reduced by 40-50 percent without compromising European security.” They further estimate that cutting back troop levels in Europe and Asia could save twelve billion dollars by itself. Overall, cutting back on foreign bases could allow the Federal Government to seriously slim down the defense budget. Doing so would allow the United States to repurpose those funds towards economic recovery, which in the long run will do far more towards maintaining American power than continuing to occupy half the world.
Retrenchment will also have the effect of increasing multilateralism in international politics. Currently, America is basically supplying security for Western Europe and Southeast Asia. Each American taxpayer pays roughly $2,000 in taxes on defense, whereas the figure is $430 for Germans (where there are 268 American bases) and $340 for Japanese (where there are 124 American bases) (Parent and MacDonald). Scaling down American bases in these areas will reduce costs for Americans and push other countries to pull their own weight in defense spending. This will encourage a more multilateral approach in terms of international defense: rather than have the US act as a hegemon and provide defense across the globe, other countries will have to supply more of their own security and work with the US to ensure global security. An increase in multilateralism could have a number of positive outcomes, such as increasing the potency of liberal institutions such as the United Nations. As American allies begin to pick up military slack that the US is leaving them, their forces will become better coordinated with American ones. This has already been seen with Japan, as “calls for Japan to assume a greater defense burden have… resulted in deeper integration of U.S. and Japanese forces” (Parent and MacDonald). Greater integrations will build stronger ties between America and its allies, primarily on a military level but applicable nonetheless. These stronger ties will increase the potency of liberal organizations such as the UN that relate to the military, for example strengthening UN authorized international interventions.
Certainly, this paper presumes a certain liberal perspective, with a focus on multilateralism and international cooperation; strengthening liberal institutions like the UN is far more important to a liberalist than a realist. Retrenchment also opens up new possibilities for liberal foreign policies. Greater military integration could play a major role in international military interventions. Libya is a great example of a successful intervention, where the US initially played a lead but allowed other nations to take over and play dominant roles (Parent and MacDonald). As happened with the EU, greater integration among specialized fields could ultimately bleed over to the political spectrum, in the form of the United Nations. While it will almost definitely not be to the degree of the EU, it is a potential outcome nonetheless.
The current course is unsustainable. Though a political cliché, it is true nonetheless, especially in regards to current US policy on foreign military bases. The current economic crisis necessitates serious budget cuts, and the funds going towards foreign bases stand ripe for the picking. If America continues to maintain overbearing foreign commitments then it will eventually be drawn into the classic imperial trap of over-commitment and collapse. By not only ending funding for a number of these abroad bases but repurposing the money into economic recovery, America can emerge rejuvenated and stronger than ever.
Works Cited
Goldstone, Jack A. "Rise of the TIMBIs." Foreign Policy Magazine. 2 Dec. 2011. Web. 8 Dec. 2011. <http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/02/rise_of_the_timbis?page=0,1>.
Parent, Joseph M., and Paul K. MacDonald. "The Wisdom of Retrenchment." Foreign Affairs 90.6 (2011): 32-47. Print.
"SIPRI Military Expenditure Database." Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Web. 8 Dec. 2011. <http://milexdata.sipri.org/files/?file=SIPRI+milex+data+1988-2010.xls>.
"US Pulls Out of Saudi Arabia." BBC News. 29 Apr. 2003. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2984547.stm>.
Zunes, Stephen. "Too Many Overseas Bases." Foreign Policy In Focus | International Affairs, Peace, Justice, and Environment. Institute for Policy Studies, 25 Feb. 2009. Web. 08 Dec. 2011. <http://www.fpif.org/articles/too_many_overseas_bases>.
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