New Battle Stations?

Kurt M. Campbell & Celeste Johnson Ward

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003

Summary:  The Pentagon is planning the greatest change in the U.S. overseas military posture in 50 years. Small, light forward bases in new countries are to replace large, heavy deployments in Germany, Japan, and South Korea. But such changes may have unintended political consequences, ones Washington has yet to seriously consider.

Kurt M. Campbell is Senior Vice President at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Director of the Aspen Strategy Group. Celeste Johnson Ward is a Fellow in the International Security Program at CSIS.

BASE FIDDLING

The Pentagon is now contemplating dramatic changes in where and how U.S. armed forces are based overseas. As Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, described the process, "everything is going to move everywhere. ... There is not going to be a place in the world where it's going to be the same as it used to be." Changes being considered include moving forces away from the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in South Korea and shifting large numbers of forces out of Germany. American defense planners want to create a global network of bare-boned facilities that could be expanded to meet crises as they arise. Taken together, the adjustments now under consideration -- in where bases are located, in the arrangements Washington makes with host countries, in troop and ship deployments, and in theaters of operation -- will constitute the most sweeping changes in the U.S. military posture abroad in half a century, greater even than the adjustments made after Vietnam and at the end of the Cold War.

Such an enormous transformation is necessary, American officials argue, because the way U.S. military assets overseas are currently configured does not address the nation's evolving security challenges. American forces should be moved closer to where threats are likely to arise. The military's flexibility and agility should also be improved, these officials say, by diversifying access points to crises and stationing troops in nations more likely to agree with U.S. policies. Such changes would have the side effect of reducing the friction caused by the large U.S. deployments in places such as Okinawa, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; and Germany.

If the planners get their way, the United States will shift people and assets from safe, secure, and comfortable rear-echelon facilities to jumping-off points closer to the flame, with all the attendant advantages and disadvantages such forward positions would imply. The shifts would have a compelling military logic. But they would also carry significant human, financial, and diplomatic costs. Because of the great size of the U.S. armed forces, any moves they make send ripples throughout local populations, economies, and security architectures. To ensure that the costs of changing to the new posture do not overwhelm the benefits, the Bush administration needs to carefully think the plans through, in all their dimensions. But so far, the military planning has advanced far beyond the supporting political and diplomatic process.

LILY PADS AND WARM BASES

As in a game of musical chairs, the position of U.S. forces abroad at any given time largely reflects where they happened to be when the last war stopped. Each strategic period thus begins with the infrastructure and deployments inherited from the last one. At the end of World War II, for example, the United States had bases around the globe left over from its fight against the Axis powers.

Many of these bases were soon put to use for a different strategy, namely hemming in the Soviet Union. Similarly, in the early 1990s, the U.S. global military posture reflected Cold War priorities but came to be used for the Clinton administration's national security strategy of "engagement and enlargement." The roughly 200,000 troops stationed in Europe and Asia, originally meant to limit Soviet ambitions, were, after an initial reduction, put to use to provide regional stability and help "shape" the international security environment.