perfidy

The Financial Times is reporting on expected American troop withdrawals from Europe. Washington is planning to cut the European presence by one-third, or about 30,000 people, the bulk of them from der Vaterland.

Earlier reportage predicted a redeployment eastward, building huge new facilities in Poland and other Warsaw Pact survivor states. The plan now seems to be to establish a series of small, spartan bases there, but with a tiny permanent presence and designed to expand rapidly if necessary.

The funny thing is that no one at all will be happy with this decision. The obvious casualties of a dramatic troop withdrawal from Germany would be the local economies associated with providing goods and services to soldiers. But it's not just bars and bordellos that would feel the pinch: every restaurant, cab driver and liquor store within 5 kilometers of an American kaserne is going to get hurt. Some businesses never recovered after the drawdowns in the '90s.

So small local merchants will be unhappy at a reduction in the American presence. But the Green/Commie/Left/Pacifists will be overjoyed, right? Wrong. Euro-hippies will exult at first without GIs running about, sweeping away their women or causing the odd fracas. They will soon find, however, that without soldiers to beat up the Poizei will be able to focus their considerable ass-kicking energies back onto the frenzied Left.

What to do with those 30,000 withdrawn soldiers is a question mark for the time being. But ultimately the United States cannot make strategic decisions like where to station an Army division based on the needs of foreign whores and barkeeps. The US need only consider the needs of good ol' American whores and barkeeps.