American special forces and CIA units conducting top-secret operations and going after anti-American counterparts? In , US special forces operations happened across nations, meaning Washington's clandestine units have run over territories, covering 70 percent of the globe. The global clout of American foreign deployments is unparalleled against any other modern nation and state in world history. The US government's secrecy also prevents a definite estimate of just how many American military troops operate abroad, misleading many through official numbers that differ from true troop presence in countries like Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.
More recently, as Washington prepares to leave Afghanistan, it was reported that there were 3, troops in the war-torn country, according to American, European and local officials, despite the fact that the official number stands at 2, One thousand soldiers makes an important difference in military terms because the US is able to control some territories in states like Syria with hundreds of troops, giving most military tasks to proxies like the YPG, the Syrian wing of the PKK, a terror group, according to both Washington and Ankara.
In Syria, Washington has applied almost the same secrecy and political manoeuvring as Afghanistan, much to the dismay of President Trump. James Jeffrey, former special envoy to Syria, publicly acknowledged that he and his colleagues were hiding real troop numbers from the president himself. But real numbers never decreased to and were kept around , according to anonymous sources.
In Iraq, a country which suffered hugely from the US occupation, a similar kind of secrecy continues. The US has more than 5, troops stationed in different locations in Iraq, according to American media accounts. Then again, experts approach that estimate with a lot of reservation. At the height of the invasion, there were more than American military bases around the country, from Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital, to Ramadi and Baghdad, the capital of the central government.
Currently, Washington keeps 12 bases across Iraq, according to military sources. Overall, under the Pentagon, the US military has eleven unified combatant commands. The Central Command, which appears to be the most important unit among others, focuses on operations mainly based in the Middle East and Central Asia.
According to the US media, Washington has troops numbering around 45, to 65, only across the Gulf. The 1, hectares 3, acres base is one of 80 bases in the country and is less than km 60 miles from the heavily fortified demilitarized zone that demarcates North Korea from South Korea. Europe is home to at least 60, US troops.
At 33,, Germany has the highest number of US troops in Europe — and the second highest in the world — followed by Italy at 12, and the UK at 9, However, the number of US troops stationed in Germany has more than halved between and , dropping from 72, to 33, The facility was used extensively during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and treated thousands of wounded soldiers.
The sq km 45 sq miles facility has been under American control since the end of the 19th century. The base is a hotly debated issue between the US and Cuba. For decades, Cuba has insisted that the US hand back the territory it took by force in and subsequently leased permanently in Over the past 70 years, the US military has been deployed to more than countries and territories.
The infographic below shows a brief history of where the US has deployed its troops since the end of World War II, along with the wars it has fought in. Allied with the South, the US deployed some 1.
It is estimated that between 2 to 3 million civilians died during the war. No formal peace treaty was ever signed. Over 3. On March 29, , the last US combat troops left Vietnam. Two years later on April 30, , communist forces seized control of South Vietnam and ended the war. For example, Poland — the current focus of the U. And the same is true in Asia. While the legacy of World War II created deep-seated pacifism among the Japanese public, the country posted some of its largest increases in defense spending in decades because it fears Chinese — and, to a lesser extent, North Korean — belligerence, even though it remains home to tens of thousands of American servicemembers.
Estimates of how much the United States could save by closing bases depends on how we count costs and what, if anything, replaces permanent overseas presence. Some models presume dramatic changes to American strategy — such as cutting, rather than relocating, the troops — that go well beyond what policymakers and many members of Congress currently view as prudent, especially in a world with intensifying great-power competition.
The actual policy proposals tend to be more modest: swapping permanently stationed forces for a rotational presence, whereby units deploy overseas from the United States for periods of time. Such policies may not actually save money. After all, sending troops abroad costs money, while many of the bases in Europe and Asia are already built and, hence, are sunk costs and the infrastructure is also subsidized by host governments.
The vulnerability argument is similarly unpersuasive. Despite all the technological advances in warfare, wars cannot be fought entirely at range. Especially in land-centric theaters like Europe, ground forces are still the key to deterrence by denial and preventing fait accompli.
Even in air- and maritime-centric theaters, however, like the Indo-Pacific, keeping forces closer to the fight simplifies logistics challenges and increases combat power by reducing the time spent in transit. And physical presence, arguably, also goes a long way toward reassuring the commitment of U. If one accepts the premise that forces still need to be forward-deployed, then the additional risk incurred by permanently basing forces overseas — versus deploying them on a temporary basis — becomes less clear.
True, overseas bases are vulnerable to attack, but so too are rotational forces. After all, there are only a limited numbers of locations that can support tanks, armored vehicles, field artillery pieces, and thousands of soldiers — especially in heavily populated places like Europe.
Above all, rotational forces trade the vulnerability of large overseas bases for the risks of needing to flow forces through a handful of air and seaports. Moreover, whatever additional risk there is needs to be weighed against a host of other operational benefits that favor forward basing. As a rule of thumb, deploying a single unit ties up three units — one deployed, one getting ready to go, and another recovering from having gone.
By contrast, stationing a unit abroad relieves this pressure and increases readiness, since units can train, operate, and maintain their forces in one location. Living overseas also can be an attractive lifestyle option for servicemembers and an added incentive to join, or remain in, the military, whereas frequent deployments away from family can harm retention.
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