Most Americans want US troops out of Europe:
The Rasmussen polling organization is out with a shock poll that the entire Washington establishment needs to study: 51 percent of voters surveyed said they wanted all US troops out of Europe, now. Only 29 percent favored keeping the troops where they are. US troops have been in Europe since World War Two. In the Cold War, they not only kept the Russians out; they gave the rest of the Old World the confidence that Germany would not come storming back for a rematch. The presence of US troops helped give western Europe its longest era of peace since Roman times.
Since the end of the Cold War the US presence in Europe has made much less sense to the average American, but foreign policy junkies like yours truly think that it still serves a purpose. Not only do those troops provide security in new NATO countries like Poland and the Baltic republics; US bases in Europe are important in dealing with terror and other problems in the Middle East and without the US presence in Europe it is unlikely that NATO in its present form can survive.
Being a sophisticated foreign policy junkie, but not, apparently, a historian or an economist, Walter Russell Mead completely fails to understand the crucial point. It’s not that “the arguments for the US presence in Europe are credible, clear and compelling”, it’s something else that entirely supersedes them. You’re BANKRUPT, dude! The USA cannot afford to pay for the US presence in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in South Korea, or in Europe. It’s done. It’s over. Even the slow-witted American public has finally figured it out.
And the more Hispanics and other third-worlders that enter the country, the less the average American is going to give a damn about the wet dreams of foreign policy junkies.