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Transforming the U.S. global defense posture
Naval War College Review, Spring, 2006 by Ryan Henry
Specifically, the process of consultations and negotiations with allies and partners establishes a tempo for bringing American forces home. Over the next ten years, from sixty to seventy thousand military personnel (along with approximately a hundred thousand family members and civilian employees) are to return to the United States from overseas installations. This realignment will also entail a net reduction of approximately 35 percent in our overseas facilities.
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The pace for these changes is set through a deliberative diplomatic process with current and potential host-nation partners in which we achieve common understandings of the security environment, develop plans that ensure mutual benefits and reliable defense commitments, and work to reduce any frictions attending upon the U.S. military presence. Multiple variables in negotiations-such as host-nation stability and sensitivity to American presence, security challenges in the region, and existing levels of host-nation infrastructure and cost sharing--are weighed across a diverse range of countries and regions.
U.S. forces that relocate as a result of this diplomatic process will be affected by the absorptive capacity of service transformation efforts and by BRAC. The planned posture changes directly support service initiatives--such as the Army's modularity and unit rotation concepts, the Navy's Fleet Response Plan, and the Air Force's ongoing force management improvements--designed to facilitate personnel management, provide predictability in scheduling, and offer more stability at home. Returning forces meet the services' need to refit their units for increased modularity. These transformed units then provide the combat power for prosecuting operations in the Global War on Terror, including Operations IRAQI FREEDOM and ENDURING FREEDOM. Of course, the absorptive capacity of returning units is also directly impacted by BRAC, which sets the pace for reconstitution of those forces in the continental United States.
Thus, a symbiotic relationship exists among global posture consultations/ negotiations overseas, service transformation, and BRAC, in which each informs and dictates the pace of the others. Imagine a clock running on three wheels, each wheel's gears interlocked with the others. Slowing one wheel would slow the entire clockwork, thereby impeding the pace of transformation to support the war on terror and enable our long-term realignment effort.
REGION-BY-REGION SYNOPSIS
Europe
Peace in Europe is no longer threatened by an enemy with tens of thousands of armored vehicles poised to invade across the North German plain. We no longer need heavy maneuver forces as the central element of our defense posture in Europe. A transformed posture--one that supports NATO's own transformation goals--requires forward forces that are rapidly deployable for early entry into conflict well beyond Europe. Such forces will continue to train alongside other NATO forces to improve interoperability for twenty-first-century operations.
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