Should America have stationed troops to defend Europe?

(sigh)

...I can't believe I'm making this thread, but a discussion seems to be needed, so here we go.

Well then? Discuss!

(I have a habit of making my "discuss" sound rather grumpy don't I?)

Disambiguation: This was during the Cold War people!

Further EDIT: Well I suppose some information would be useful.

We're discussing whether the US should have stationed troops in Europe during the Cold War to guard against a Soviet attack or just leave the Europeans to defend themselves. Now seeing as Europe was the US's greatest trade partner and that having a red Europe was hardly in US interests, I'd say yes.

edited 29th Sep '10 9:39:22 AM by GameChainsaw

Pros:

• Europe is now one of our foremost trading partners, a massive success story for money invested in rebuilding.
• Absent defending Europe, we might now be staring across the Atlantic at a hostile Communist empire stretching from France to Kamchatka.
• If the Soviet Union controls European trade routes, that gives them access to the Middle East. We can kiss our oil trade with them goodbye, more or less forcing us to annex South America and turning into The Empire vs. The Empire.

Cons:

• Fuck those lazy ungrateful Europeans. (I'm anticipating Major Tom's contribution to this thread.)
• Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Iraq, and numerous other totalitarian regimes we funded to keep the Commies off our backs.

edited 29th Sep '10 9:42:17 AM by Fighteer

Well I was trying to compose how to make this thread in my head but oh well...

I'm of the opinion that it was a serious mistake for the US to undertake so much of the defense of Europe alone, provided we stepped up to defend it in the first place.

Why? Because in our presence the once-mighty European nations now had vastly diminished worries about coming under attack or needing to contribute to a war effort.

On the pro-side it kept out millions of people from the clutches of tyrannical Soviet regimes. On the other, the combined military strength of Europe outside of Russia is pathetic. Any large scale determined aggressor be it India, Russia, China or the United States would almost effortlessly crush the continent. To say nothing of how soft those states have become.

Don't believe that assessment? Let's look at Britain for example.

• The Royal Navy barely operates enough ships today to defend only the British Isles. It does not have the operational capacity to respond to another Falklands War type situation and be expected to provide meaningful defense of Britain's home islands.
• The RAF doesn't fare much better.
• The Royal Army is undermanned and underequipped. Sure the SAS is a badass regiment, but that doesn't make up for a severe lack of manpower against a determined aggressor.

The French barely fare any different. The Germans while never known for having much naval capabilities are barely able to organize themselves at home. In Afghanistan, they are forbidden from most combat and they are vastly underperforming in their manpower needs for the NATO contribution.

Much of the rest of Europe is either too small to have the manpower (northern Euro countries especially), or doesn't take national defense seriously.

edited 29th Sep '10 9:43:22 AM by MajorTom

Tom, you're suggesting a need for massive military capability in the modern world. Aren't we supposed to be getting away from that? Why, in the name of the Olympian gods, would anyone want to invade Europe? And who would do it? China? Iraq?

^ To provide for a common peace, nations must be prepared for war. Military capabilities have never diminished in importance even today.

It matters not who does the invasion, it matters that if it happens at all Europe is screwed without big time foreign intervention.

Also, we have money and a production base. That was all Israel needed to go from practically unarmed to a Badass Army overnight. We can do the same, should the need arise.

And there lies one of the issues. You had the production capabilities in the Cold War, why did you not use them to help us help you?

That was the mistake we made in the Cold War was never asking more of Europe and doing it all on our own.

Britain, with the exception of 1960 to 1970, did keep parity or near parity, even though we were poorer and had less of our GDP to give. We even outstripped the Americans in the 1950's when we were at our weakest.

edited 29th Sep '10 9:52:56 AM by GameChainsaw

Yet why couldn't France or Belgium or Italy or West Germany do the same as that?

Tom, you're making two entirely separate statements here. One, that we should have stayed out of Europe post WWII and just let the Soviets take everything over. I can't help but think you don't take that argument seriously, because if you do, I question your sanity. The other, that Europe got too comfortable with the U.S. providing their shield that they dumped their own military spending, has some validity, but isn't it as much our fault as theirs?

Anyway, you seem to be using this as a smokescreen to hide your real beef with Europe, which is that they're too liberal over there. In your world, any nation that isn't libertarian is a failure, and then you look for evidence. You're an ideological troll masquerading as a serious debater (and not very well, at that).

^Lets try to avoid ad-hominem attacks. I may seem to disagree with Tom every time I speak with him, but that doesn't mean I'll attack him. I'll certainly attack his arguments.

I don't know, but at least Britain was trying. Would you abandon your closest allies as they fought for their survival?... and your interests, incidentally.

edited 29th Sep '10 10:06:42 AM by GameChainsaw

^^ It carries the two forms because it asks the same question: Why couldn't Europe carry more of their own weight?

Why couldn't they step up so we either didn't have to do everything or be there in the first place? The Russians were not so insurmountable that only we Americans could stand up to them.

edited 29th Sep '10 10:06:25 AM by MajorTom

^As I said, the SU's fall and Europes survival was in US interests, both from an ideological and economic, and indeed from a security point of view.

True, but the question still stands.

Well, they were recovering from being devastated by war. Be fair, they simply couldn't spare as much of their money. They needed that money to rebuild. They helped to win the economic war against the Soviets by proving their system didn't work. There were many good reasons to focus on turning Europe into an economic powerhouse rather than a military one.

Britain was never occupied. We were left stronger, and thus could afford to step up. And it did hurt us. The fact that we are now behind France and Germany in wealth possibly reflects this. Or maybe France and Germany were just better run. To be honest, I don't know.

EDIT: And yes, there was probably plenty of selfish self-interest around too. But as always, these things cannot be painted black and white.

edited 29th Sep '10 10:31:38 AM by GameChainsaw

Does anyone have any actual numbers of relative strengths of the time?

Also what are the countries we are talking about here?

• West Germany (demilitarised)
• Austria (neutral)
• Italy
• Greece
• Turkey
• Finland
• The Franco-Dutch countries
• The Scandinavia countries (Sweden was neutral)
• Switzerland (neutral, mountainous, on average >1 assault rifles per household)
• France (the De Gaulle-NATO rift meant that there largely wasn't a US presence here)
• UK
• Spain

^This tells you what everyone was spending.

UK and France are the third and forth best funded armies in the world aren't they? (maybe forth and fifth at the time). I can't imagine it differed that much at the time.

And both were in a similar position in regards to being nuclear powers (the UK was the second for example, and whilst America and Russia went to ridiculous extremes, UK/France certainly take second behind them, with more then enough).

I don't know how anyone could say that Europe did nothing to defend itself against a possible Soviet invasion. IIRC the german army was the very backbone of the NATO land forces in Europe for much of the cold war. Lot's of manpower and top notch equipment (in the 70s and 80s; they sucked before that).

Nope. Then again i'd be happy with the Soviets forming some Eurasian Union & am socialist. It gives a chance for internal conflict if the USSR does not have as immediate a threat from outside, and severs the colonizing countries/their colonies more directly & aggressively. Also it smashes fascism in Spain, which still has falange rebels from the civil war. Not to mention the popularity of communism in Greece, Italy and France. It'd be good to see non soviet communist systems in place and how they'd influence the USSR

edited 29th Sep '10 4:24:26 PM by BalloonFleet

Dear God no...

A violent war followed by the implementation of a system proven to fail... well not proven, but with a seriously bad track record. In countries that are already fairly socialist.

Bad idea. Really, really bad idea.

edited 29th Sep '10 4:28:36 PM by GameChainsaw

It didn't have such a bad track record in 1940 and 50s as it has today. But yeah, the Soviets would have installed a Soviet system in all of Europe and made it into a collection of communist client states. They would definatly not unified Europe considering Stalin was big on "Divide and Conquer" (see most of the borders of the caucasus republics for example). And the end result would have been the same: After decades of oppression and mismanagment the people would have rejected communism as they almost always did.

Really bad idea.

edited 29th Sep '10 4:38:10 PM by DasAuto

Re:17.

So I looked over that page and it made a point which made me want to look up something: does anybody have figures for the GDP percentage spent on US forces in the far east and non European theatres? Does anybody have figures for the costs of the Vietnam war? I tried looking up just basic man numbers and came up with 540,000 in 1969 just before "Vietnamization" started, can anyone confirm and does anyone have the numbers in Europe at the time?

What Game Chainsaw said: They needed to maximize their recovery. Thus, with our infrastructures and production centers left virtually untouched for the entire war, we could afford to shoulder more of the military burden than they could.

After the USSR died off, then... well. I think the question should have shifted into along the lines of "okay, now that we won the cold war, why are we still over there?"

(answer: to make movement of troops and material to the Middle East easier, at this point.)

That explains the airfields, military hospitals and logistical bases. What about the rest?