A U.S. defense strategy is coming, just not from the president

A glimpse of the numbers and timelines of such a strategy can be inferred from work by Jennifer Kavanagh and Dan Caldwell at the think tank Defense Priorities. Caldwell is notable because he was in the Pentagon, near Colby and close to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—until Hegseth fired him and others amid an outbreak of paranoia over leaks.

Kavanagh and Caldwell recommend that the U.S. reduce its military presence in Europe from roughly 90,000 service members in uniform now to about 30,000 in the next three years, and to 20,000 within a decade. Air and naval forces in Europe would be halved, and then reduced to a minimum. In the Middle East, where the U.S. has about 40,000 service members and lots of floating and flying kit, they recommend closing bases and withdrawing fighter squadrons and carrier groups. The total American footprint in that region would shrink by two-thirds. In South Korea, where the U.S. has about 28,000 military personnel, Kavanagh and Caldwell suggest withdrawing more than half during this term and almost all in the coming years.

By contrast, they’d leave most of the 55,000 American troops in Japan, as well as the contingents in the Philippines and other Asian and Pacific locations, although they’d move them around to make them less vulnerable to Chinese attacks. And they’d double down on AUKUS, a pact among the U.S., Britain and Australia that will bring more American nuclear-powered submarines to the region. (Notably, Colby seems skeptical about AUKUS, and has put that budding alliance under review.)