By John Cookson
During the early days of the Cold War, President Truman’s secretary of state Dean Acheson quipped that information presented to the U.S. public about foreign affairs should be “clearer than the truth.” In other words, embellishing threats was encouraged, as long as it drove home an intended policy point in Americans’ minds. The result was damaging enough at the time, cutting off more nuanced policy options from consideration and chipping away at the public’s trust in government. But rather than abandoning Acheson’s reckless dictum, many commentators on transatlantic security today take it further still. Their arguments are not clearer than truth, they’re clear of it — falling well apart from an accurate appraisal of the situation.
Take the recent news that Washington intends to remove some 9,500 U.S. troops from Germany. The relatively minor reduction, with the open possibility that some personnel would stay in Europe but move to Poland, was nonetheless met with hysteria by a noticeable portion of the commentariat. The decision was assessed as a “colossal” and “disastrous mistake.” It would surely trigger a response by Moscow. A former head of the U.S. Army in Europe warned that it could lead to Russian incursions into Romania and the Baltic states, and potentially even to Moscow threatening the use of nuclear weapons.
All of this is Achesonian exaggeration at its worst. European NATO allies — that is, all NATO members except the United States and Canada — have 1.8 million active military personnel among them, twice as many as Russia. Military spending by European NATO members last year was four times that of Russia, according to figures tracked by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The idea that fewer than ten thousand U.S. troops are critical in deterring the Kremlin is nonsense.
This piece was originally published in The Hill on June 21, 2020. Read more HERE.