In light of Euro-wussiness and Russian belligerence, Wess Mitchell argues the US should move its European forces to the east. 

A dangerous cycle could ensue in which US allies feel a sharpened security dilemma and Russia continually tests the limits of its local power position. The net result could be that the vital strategic middle ground between Russia and Europe could gradually come back “into play” for the first time in two decades.

This would not be in the US national interest. While the centrality of Georgia to key American interests may be, as some US commentators allege, debatable, the importance of Central Europe is not. Of the three occasions in the past century when America has been pulled into global conflicts, all originated in the 800-mile strip of land between the Baltic and Black Seas. Only when this region, and with it, the eastern flank of NATO, are unambiguously in the Western ambit can America confidently turn its attention away from Europe and deal from a position of strength with issues further afield.

In an ideal world, the United States would be able to count on the European Union to quell disturbances in what is, after all, Europe’s own strategic hinterland. However, as recent events have shown, many of the EU’s largest states are more interested in avoiding a rupture with Moscow than in protecting the vital interests of the Union’s eastern members.

When Russia launched a cyber attack on Estonia last summer, the EU failed to issue a meaningful response. When Russia threatened to aim nuclear weapons at Poland and the Czech Republic for cooperation on US missile defense, the EU said nothing. And when Russia invaded Georgia, eastern leaders were shocked to find their Western neighbors reluctant, not only to back proposals for a tough EU response, but to assign blame in the conflict at all.

If a convincing message is to be sent to Moscow, it will have to come from the United States. Perhaps it’s too late even for that. Perhaps the majority of analysts are right that America - distracted, out-maneuvered and over-stretched - is no longer capable of a tough response.

But perhaps not. There is one option that has not been discussed that could help to shift the diplomatic playing-field to the West’s favor. The United States should announce its intention to transfer, on a permanent basis, the entire Europe-based American military establishment to new locations in Central Europe.

This should include the EUCOM headquarters and the bulk of the US Seventh Army and Third Air Force - upwards of 60,000 troops. Ideally, these forces and facilities would be distributed between the three largest and most Atlanticist eastern states - Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania - thus covering the northern, southern and central approaches to the region.