Эволюция военного присутствия США в Европе: пример ФРГ

Abstract

The article explores the transformation of the U.S. military presence in Germany В 1990-2020. The author tries to fit this process into two more general ones: the evolution of the U.S. military presence in Europe (since the beginning of the new Cold War) and the U.S.-German dialogue in the sphere of security and defense. Since 2014 the USA created and increased its military potential in Eastern Europe. But at the same time we can face the great quantitative and qualitative (rotational and permanent character of military presence) disproportion between the U.S. forces located in Eastern Europe and old NATO member states, especially Germany. The article issues the changes in the size and organizational structure of the US troops in Germany since 1990. One of the reasons of their reduction was the U.S. willingness to stimulate European partners to encourage more contributions in European part of NATO`s zone of responsibility that means to «discharge» the U.S. armed forces. At the same time the White House has been interested in maintaining of its rather large military presence in Germany and launched its recovery growth in the mid 2010-s. In the XXI century the maintaining of the U.S. military presence has been becoming the problem for bilateral dialogue, first of all during its crises. In this regard the author pays special attention to features, «narrow places» and possible consequences of two initiatives. They are the Gerhard Schröder`s proposal for the complete with-drawal of the U.S. troops from Germany (2005) and Donald Trump`s plans (2018; the more detailed version 2020) to cut the large part of the U.S. military presence. The article concludes about the quantitative parameters of its critically low level and consequences for the USA if this level is passed.