European Command Looks South and East

摘要

Things have changed drastically for US European Command. Personnel strength and base facilities are down about 70 percent since the peak of the Cold War. The old mission, keeping the Soviet Union out of Western Europe, is long gone. In recent years, the focus has been on smaller regional conflicts, notably Operation Allied Force in Yugoslavia in 1999, and on building partnerships with nations that used to be part of the Warsaw Pact. Now, more changes are on the way for EUCOM as the United States shifts its strategic attention to an "arc of instability" that cuts across Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. "The Cold War is over and we're not expecting the Soviet Union, which doesn't exist anymore, to launch a major tank war across the north German plain," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said on a visit to Iraq in September. "So we need to adjust our footprint. One of the places we're looking at adjusting it is in Europe."