The 1,000-mile return trek to the garrison in Vilseck, Germany, through Poland and the Czech Re- public, is allowing Moore’s platoons to test vehicle suites, command structures, communication gear, and maintenance skills. More important, Dragoon Ride is a demonstration of U.S. military pres- ence, “reassuring our NATO allies,” says Moore, “that we’re here, that we have the capability to move forward logistically and to supply ourselves.” This is the final leg of a three- month deployment for 3rd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment — 650 soldiers and 60 Strykers spread across Po- land, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia for partnership training. It’s just a small part of Operation

I

Atlantic Resolve, which, so far, is a yearlong reassurance initiative by U.S. land, air, and maritime forces to show America’s commitment to col- lective security of NATO in the face of Russian aggression. Besides Russia to the east, Europe sees new dangers south and south- west as Middle Eastern and African nations are roiled by Islamic militancy and civil wars. The challenges facing Europe are significant enough that Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe and commander of U.S. Euro-

56 MILITARY OFFICER JUNE 2015

T’S LATE MARCH, and Army Capt. Russell Moore is lead- ing Lightning Troop, a mobile infantry company of 150 sol- diers, 20 Stryker vehicles, and a tactical support element of trucks and mortar carriers on a mechanized march south from training grounds in Lithuania.

pean Command, suggests a pause in further U.S. force reductions to allow time to reassess. So has the downshift in U.S. forces

in Europe gone too far? “The way I would characterize

it,” says Breedlove in a phone inter- view from NATO headquarters in Brussels, “is that based on what [we] know about the threat we see, the changed security situation, it is to- tally time, in sports parlance, to take a knee and … reconsider.”

Shiſting priorities U.S. military personnel in direct sup- port of European Command stand at 57,000 (26,700 soldiers and 25,400 airmen; the remainder are sailors and Marines). With Europe serving as a critical platform for operations in the Middle East and North Africa, another 10,000 U.S. personnel are stationed there to operate missions elsewhere. That 67,000 is one-third less than 100,000 personnel in Eu- rope a decade ago and down about 85 percent from more than 400,000 U.S. troops in Europe during the peak of the Cold War. NATO partners complained vigor- ously in 2012 when DoD announced plans to inactivate two heavy bri- gades, or Army brigade combat teams (BCTs), in Europe, including

the last M1 Abrams tanks and A-10 attack aircraft. The U.S. Army’s foot- print in Germany is shrinking from 16 garrisons down to seven by 2017. Some allies challenged assump- tions and analyses that had shaped a revised U.S. Defense Strategic Guid- ance released in January 2012. Not surprisingly, the guidance supported the administration’s plan for a strate- gic shift to Asia and the Pacific as the last U.S. combat forces left Iraq and the schedule was set for a U.S. draw- down from Afghanistan. Two factors drove the last round of

U.S. troop cuts in Europe: tightening defense budgets ordered by the Bud- get Control Act (BCA) of 2011 and a false belief by U.S. policymakers, em- braced off and on over 20 years, that Russia could be a partner for peace. The BCA has been softened but not repealed. Meanwhile, Russian aggres- sion since Vladimir Putin recaptured the presidency in 2012 has ended the illusion of a peace partner. “Even after [Russia’s] invasion of

Georgia in ’08, we continued to work to bring Russia into the western fam- ily of nations,” says Breedlove. “And the decision about forward force structure in NATO all [was] based on the [belief] Russia would be a partner into the future. Of course, now we don’t see a partner in Russia,

PHOTOS: RIGHT, STAFF SGT. RYAN CRANE, USAF; ABOVE RIGHT, PAVEL NEMECEK/AP; PREVIOUS SPREAD, SGT. KIMBERLY MIANECKI, USA