May 22, 2025:
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was a wakeup call for Germany. The German military, known as the Bundeswehr, was upgraded and expanded. Within two years Germany had, for the first time reached the NATO goal of two percent of GDP spent on defense. That’s more than $75 billion. This pays for an army brigade to be created and stationed in Lithuania, which borders Russia. The Bundeswehr is buying the Israeli Arrow air defense system; to shoot down any Russian missiles aimed at Germany. Other air defense system dealt with drones and aircraft.
At sea the naval branch of the Bundeswehr sent a frigate to help deal with the situation in the Red Sea. The Houthi rebels in Yemen were trying to halt shipping moving north to the Suez Canal or an Israeli port in southern Sinai. For the first time since World War II, a German warship opened fire on an armed enemy. This was part of a multinational effort to suppress the Houthi threat. All that firepower worked, as the Houthis declared a ceasefire because they had run out of missiles, men and militancy.
Unfortunately the Bundeswehr has come up short in the manpower department. While the German government supports and pays for rearmament, many military age German men are reluctant to commit. The Bundeswehr is short a quarter of the personnel it needs to operate all these weapons.
These problems come at a time when the United States has withdrawn its security pledge to support European NATO nations in defending Europe. This is in sharp contrast to the situation before 2022. The United States has had military bases overseas since World War II ended in 1945. These included over 300 installations dispersed throughout 49 countries in Europe and Japan. There were 225 in Germany, but between 1994 and 2014 most of these bases were shut down or transferred to the German Bundeswehr. This gradually changed, especially during the 1948-1991 Cold War. After 1991 American military facilities overseas increased outside Western Europe and by 2024 there were some 800 bases in seventy countries.
By 2009 the dwindling U.S. forces in Europe were turning into museums, literally. There since World War II, American military units casually preserved many historical artifacts. After spending over half a century in Europe, the U.S. Army force went from two corps and over six divisions with 18 combat brigades there during the Cold War, to the current four brigades. During the Cold War, there were over 300,000 U.S. troops in Western Europe. That gradually shrank to about 40,000, and by 2025 there were 84,000 U.S. military personnel in Europe.
Worldwide the United States had, by 2021, 642 bases in 76 foreign nations and 159 in overseas American territories. There are American military personnel in 170 nations worldwide. Some of these are embassy military attaches. There are now 100,000 troops in Germany, Italy and Britain with another 56,000 in Japan, 24,000 in South Korea, about a thousand in the nine Philippines bases and 15,000 in the Middle East. There are 123 bases in Germany, 113 in Japan and 79 in South Korea. These include the modest Al Udeid airbase in Qatar and the massive Aviano military base complex in Italy, which hosts a total of 49 American bases.
Broken down by service there are 220 army bases in 29 overseas locations. The U.S. Marine Corps maintains 31 bases, the U.S. Navy 97 and the Air Force has 170 in nine foreign regions including Japan with 52,852 personnel, the Philippines with about a thousand, Germany 34,894, South Korea 23,732, Italy 12,319, Papua New Guinea a hundred or so, Britain 10,180, Bahrain 3,424, Spain 3,253, Poland a few dozen, Turkey 1,683, Kuwait a few hundred, Belgium 1,119, Australia about a hundred and Cuba 572. There are also many temporary sites for special operations.
One problem with all this is that the Bundeswehr is supposed to have 203,000 active troops, but can only attract 181,000. This may change if Russian forces advance on Germany rather than just threaten to. The last time the Russians invaded in 1945, the Germans fought to the end.