During my time in the USN, I went to sea several times on several different ships. I have been all over the Mediterranean and seen a goodly portion of the North Atlantic. Sometimes the ship anchored out of sight of land. Sometimes we basically cut large circles in the water.
Whether we were sitting still, moving slowly, or traveling at “operational” speed there is one thing in particular that we were NOT doing. We were not protecting the ocean. We were not there to stop others from using the ocean near us. As a matter of fact, we quite frequently shared the ocean immediately around us with other vessels commercial, military or recreational from any number of nations.
But if we were not there to protect the ocean in whole or in part, why were we there?? We were there to prove we could be there. We were there so that if something happened closer to there than to our nation, we could respond (assuming a response was necessary) more quickly than a response that had to come from the USA proper. In government/military speak, we were there to “force project”. We also are typically very visible so as to let others know that we can force project at will.
It is not necessarily obvious but the Army works that way too. When we either establish an American base or are granted significant access to a foreign ally’s base, we are not doing it to protect that particular bit of geography or the local inhabitants. Our primary purpose will be to force project. The Philippine Islands were not in particular danger of being invaded or assaulted. We put multiple bases there anyway. We did it so we did not have to respond to Asian issues from the USA.
There are secondary and tertiary reasons for those bases. The economic benefit to the area can be significant but, it is generally a side effect.
We do not have bases in Germany because we think Hitler might not be gone for good. We have them to enable a quick and effective response to issues affecting our European allies and by extension, us. The primary threat consideration for those bases has been the Soviet/Russian/Eastern Bloc nations.
Removing a base or simply reassigning the soldiers from that base does not directly endanger the area immediately around that base. It does diminish our ability to force project. It does diminish our ability to present a speedy response to threats coming from that general direction. It effectively makes our nation weaker and less secure.
Sometimes a base outlives its usefulness. Political and national alliances have been known to change. Technological changes can render a base significantly less useful. But the core truths do not change. The removal of several thousand troops from any given European base might well cause some fiscal and social discomfort to any number of individual Europeans. But it will not significantly impact the EU. What it will do is negatively affect our ability to project military power. It might make some less willing to do business with those who purchase consumable supplies for our deployed military units. It will hurt us more than it hurts them.
I would suggest that is not sustainable “leadership”.
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