Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "What does Trump's withdrawal of US troops mean for Germany and NATO? | DW News" video.

@doreybain The reason to stay in Germany is physics and geopolitical. You can't operate drones in the middle east or northern Africa with operators in the US, nor fly wounded soldiers there fast enough. The distance is just too great, the latency for the drones too high etc. Yes, you can operate in Italy or Poland etc. But the main center of population and industry in Europe goes from London through the Benelux countries and western Germany towards the Alps and northern Italy. For the greatest geopolitical bang for the buck and infrastructure support you'll want any base east of the Atlantic located there. Nowhere outside Europe is both friendly enough and stable enough and got the infrastructure and location to be as useful as that region. Germany is smack in the middle of that. Belgium and the Netherlands might do a similar job, England and Italy is just on the outskirts of this European hub and outside Europe you just don't have any options giving you this big a reach. Pulling out of Europe would entail pulling out most of your capabilities of western Asia and most of Africa too with the implications that has on trade and the resources security for US companies. Basically the US base in Germany has nothing to do with defending Europeans and everything to do with securing the resources needed by US companies (and by extension US jobs).
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@mweskamppp Not just North Africa and the middle East. Sending signals from Europe up to satelits above central Asia and Central Africa is also quicker than from the US meaning that the EU bases also contribute to the US capabilities in those areas.
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@tolmie1141 The electoral systems using proportional representation that's popular in Europe is actually way more democratic then the US first past the post system. Over here people actually vote for people to represent them rather than voting against the worst of two options. Leaders of our politicans are then picked by the politicans they're meant to lead and serve more as civil servants doing a professional job of smoothing out the bumps in the way of getting things done that your politicans fail to deal with. Because of our structures our politicans can can actually come to agreements even from the opposite sides of the political spectrum. Think Bush, Trump, Sanders, Hillary, Obama etc all coming together and making a compromise that non of them hate that they're all willing to accept and that passes into law and or the policy of the sitting government. That's how we do it here in Europe.
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