The U.S. Military in Europe: On the Tyranny of the Status Quo

On January 14, 2012, the American media reported that the U.S. Pentagon would bring home two brigades from Europe. That would reduce the U.S. Army presence by 10,000 to 30,000. “During the height of the cold war, when America’s heavily armored and nuclear-tipped force in Europe comforted allies and deterred the Soviet Union, the Army reached a peak of 277,342 troops on the Continent.”[1] A mere 30,000 might seem trite in comparison, and thus palatable, unless it be noticed that the cold war ended with the fall of the USSR. So it is perplexing that the “reductions come as some European leaders and analysts make their case for a sustained American presence on the Continent to deal with uncertainties, including a rambunctious Russia — even as these same NATO allies are unable or unwilling to increase spending for their own defense.”[2] There it is then—a military subsidy of sorts. To be sure, Russia is uneasy about Eastern European countries becoming states in the E.U., but this hardly counts as rambunctiousness—at least at the level justifying a military defense. It is democracy, rather than Europe, that needs defense in terms of Russia, given the hegemony of the United Russia party in Russian politics. As one senior European official said, “We don’t need a massive presence of U.S. troops. After all, we don’t see Russia anymore as an enemy or an adversary, but even as a partner, if a difficult one.”[3] The shift from adversary to ally has perhaps not fully sunk in—human perception being slow to let go of long-held assumptions.

In my opinion, the uncertainty in Europe in the wake of the Pentagon’s announcement involved more than a bit of overreaction. “Philip H. Gordon, the State Department’s assistant secretary for European affairs, already was visiting capitals on the Continent, reassuring an audience in Berlin . . .  that ‘the United States remains committed to a strong Europe, the collective defense of our NATO allies, and to building and maintaining the capacity and partnerships that allow us to work together on a global scale.’”[4] Such reassurance was hardly needed. In fact, it would not be needed were the remaining 30,000 troops pulled out. That would not be tantamount to the United States leaving NATO, after all. Yet strangely, the perception would be exactly that, and in politics perception can create its own effects, even reality.

Beyond the matter of military strategy (in the context of a $15 trillion U.S. Government debt), the fact that the U.S. is leaving 30,000 troops in Europe may itself point to the staying power in the status quo as an object or worship. Beyond lapses in “readjusting,” it may be that the adage, “same old, same old” gets too much air time, particularly given that the twenty-first century is not the twentieth. Thomas Jefferson advocated a new constitution every twenty years, or at least a decision on the matter. It might not be a bad thing were a little “spring cleaning” done  in the first few decades of any new century—rather than simply continuing so much on the books from the last century. The U.S. as protector of Europe is from the standpoint of the twenty-first century so antiquated that a pathological aversion to change can be suspected, with justification itself being presumed to be in the sheer existence of a practice. In other words, it’s always been done that way, so why question it? Under the tyranny of the status quo, layers of old laws and regulations pile up like old clothes in a basement. New clothes are instantly labeled as “extreme” and are therefore eliminated from serious consideration. The inertia of ongoing practices stifle even thought itself and render human experience far too constricted, even regimented. To break on through to the other side, where there is fresh air to breath and room to flex one’s muscles as nature intended, the entire order must have collapsed, and this seems hardly necessary.

1. Tom Shanker and Steven Erlanger, “U.S. Faces New Challenge of Fewer Troops in Europe,” The New York Times, January 13, 2012. 
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

Futility of a League: Arab Action against Assad

With observers on the ground in Syrian cities, the Arab League conceded at the beginning of 2012 that the monitors had “failed to halt the lethal violence” in Syria.[1] Nabil Al Arabi, the organization’s chair, acknowledged that snipers persisted in major cities, but that the allegiance of the shooters had not been ascertained. Such cautiousness was itself likely a contributor to what the Journal refers to as “pitfalls of the organization’s self-reinvention as a regional diplomatic playmaker.”[2] Criticism had been mounting that the “monitoring mission has done little to resolve a conflict that the United Nations [estimated at the time had] taken more than 5,000 mostly civilian lives. Perhaps this might be an indication of the snipers’ allegiance.

As of January 3^, 2012, 390 people had been killed in Syria since the observers arrived on December 29^th—which is less than a week before the report.[3] The observers were tasked with monitoring Assad’s compliance with his promise to pull security forces from the city streets, release political prisoners, and allow foreign journalists and human rights workers to enter Syria. Unless the protesters were shooting on themselves, the gun-shots and 390 deaths suggest that Assad was furtively continuing the government’s involvement in the violence.

On January 11, 2012, Anwar Abdel Malik, one of the observers, abruptly resigned because “he felt that the mission was serving the interests of the government rather than trying to end the crackdown on protesters. The mission was a farce, and the observers have been fooled,” he said. “The regime orchestrated it and fabricated most of what we saw, to stop the Arab League from taking action against the regime.” He added, “The regime isn’t committing one war crime, but a series of crimes against its people.” A week earlier, the human rights group Avaaz had reported that the group’s “researchers had gathered the names of at least 617 people who had died under torture in government installations since the beginning of the uprising against [Assad].”[4]

On the day that Malik resigned, Assad was at an outdoors rally in Damascus, telling the cheering crowd that he had come to draw energy from it. “I belong to this street,” he said before promising to end the “conspiracy” then underway—as if blatant protests in the cities of Syria were somehow secret and hidden from view.[5] In reaction to how Assad depicted the protests and the extent to which he claimed that the evidence against his government’s atrocities simply did not exist even though it did, we might want to worry a bit more about how much validity we give to the microphone in defining social reality. An official says X, and society takes X as valid, more often than not wholly uncritically as if little fish with mouths wide open, mindlessly swimming in a school without a hint of education.

Given Assad’s rock-hard intransigence, going the route of monitors being led around by his government officials can be reckoned as tantamount to admitting impotence. The response by the League was a marked departure from when the League asked the U.N. Security Council to impose a No Fly Zone over Libya. To be sure, even if the Arab League were to make the request in the case of Syria, the existence of the veto in the Council would likely merely confirm the impotence of the “regional diplomatic playmaker.” So what can be done?

Although not sufficient as a remedy, strengthening the Arab League from being a confederal alliance of largely empty threats to a federal system with teeth on par with the E.U. and U.S. might be good a start. The Journal reports that the failure of the monitors was opening new rifts within the league. The president of the Arab Parliament, a mere advisory body of Arab League diplomats whose decisions are non-binding, recommended that Arabi withdraw the observers. Even though they may have been providing Assad with cover and a tool of delay, Arabi was free to disregard the “parliament’s” advice. Conversely, if the E.U. Parliament, which is composed of elected representatives of the E.U. citizens, passes the law (i.e., not just advisory), the president of the E.U. Commission cannot simply ignore it. As the Arab league stood at the beginning of 2012, relying on the alliance to stop Assad was more than a bit naïve. The Arab League “diplomats” might examine the E.U. in particular for ideas on how the league could become something more than a league, adding the checks and balances that dual sovereignty enables. Were Syria a state in such a union, its basic law could allow a supermajority of elected representatives and state officials in Arab Union bodies to impose a No Fly Zone or do even more militarily.

Of course, the U.S. and the state of Israel would doubtless object to an Arab federal union, but such an entity could in principle be drawn up without the permission of the outside parties. My basic point over all here is that the Arab Spring in 2011 could serve as a springboard for Arab leaders to think about systemic changes that go beyond incremental fixes that don’t really fix anything. According to Salman Shaikh at the Brookings Institution, Arab leaders are “feeling the wishes of their street much more. Whereas perhaps they could have ignored them before, they are hearing now that 85% to 90% of the people are with the protesters.” So, he added, the leaders are “being compelled to act.” The question is perhaps whether their institutions can afford them the ability to do so, or whether the “actions” will continue to be “monitors” and diplomats’ statements.

1.  Matt Bradley and Nour Malas, “Arab World Diplomacy Fails to Stop Syria Clash,” The Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2011. 
2. Ibid.
3. Kareem Fahim, “Hundreds Tortured in Syria, Human Rights Group Says,” The New York Times, January 6, 2012. 
4. Nada Bakri, “Syria’s President Is Defiant in Rare Public Appearance,” The New York Times, January 12, 2012. 
5. Ibid.