Now that it appears that Joe Biden will become president on 20 January those that favor military deployments all over the world are starting to remerge after having been beaten down by President Trump.

In order to highlight their argument, I am re-posting an article that I received from PresidentialInsider.com.

“Withdrawing into a defensive and insular crouch here at home risks leaving Americans more isolated and more vulnerable to threats,” Panetta wrote. “More than ever, Americans must go abroad to remain secure at home.”

Hear that? More foreign wars.

And you can bet that Biden is listening if he becomes president in January.

The various essays in the report explore lots of different overseas conflicts and give arguments for why more American blood should be shed overseas.

Col. Maxwell, a former Special Forces officer, criticized the president’s commitment to bringing American soldiers home.

“Over the last couple of years there’s been a real discussion about pulling back U.S. forces. President Trump has always talked about withdrawing U.S. troops,” Maxwell lamented. “The original intent (of the report) is to show the value of our forward-stationed forces and the strategic flexibility they provide us.”

Retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor to President Trump, also said that there would only be “Paltry savings” to bringing Americans home and that they would be “dwarfed by the eventual cost of responding to unchecked and undeterred threats to American security, prosperity and influence.”

Does it sound like these people really have America’s best interests at heart?

The article highlights the two arguments for deploying troops abroad:

1. We should fight whatever enemies we might have on foreign soil so that we don’t have to fight them at home.  In this regard allies and other foreign countries that are friendly with the United States cannot be trusted to deal with threats using their resources.
2. Foreign deployments position troops closer to potential future battlegrounds making deployments easier to accomplish in less time and using fewer resources.  The example that is used is the deployment of the US V Corps from Germany to Iraq in 1990. 

Both arguments in a cold war like environment tend to make some sense.  However, there are some concerns that need to be addressed:

1. Having troops stationed in the US with equipment foreign deployed for the troops to deploy and fall in on facilitates deployment of Rapid response forces.  V Corps Headquarters was just reactivated in Europe to be the tactical headquarters for troops being deployed from the US.  Equipment has been prepositioned for an Armored Brigade Combat Team (BCT) with more to follow.
2. Every six to 8 months a BCT is deployed to both Eastern Europe and Korea and the ones there are returned to home stationed.  These deployment show US commitment to the respective areas and also keep the troops trained on deployment skills.
3. Some of the troops being deployed from Germany are not coming back to the US be are moving from Germany into Eastern Europe.
4. The argument is that troops in Eastern Europe provide a better deterrent against the Russian than if they were in Germany,
5. There is already a “ready” BCT in Kuwait and equipment prepositioned on Diego Garcia.

The overall goal of current deployments is to increase flexibility while reducing the US overseas footprint and thus the number of targets deployed overseas.

The redeployment of troops will be one of the indicators of the extent of the return to globalism with the new administration.