March 3, 2025 (EIRNS)—So what does the shift of the U.S. under President Donald Trump towards peace in Ukraine and normalization of relations with Russia mean for the U.S. military presence in Europe. In East Anglia, where some 9,000 U.S. military personnel are based at the Lakenheath and Mildenhall air bases, there’s worry about the economic hit the region would take should the U.S. military leave. “[W]ere the U.S. to decide to reduce operations here, the economic impact would be substantial. RAF Mildenhall estimates the overall economic impact of the bases in West Suffolk as around $577 million a year—around 3% of the local economy,” reports East Anglia Bylines, a local publication.
But the context is the collapse of the British military. General the Lord David Richards of Hertsmonceux (ret.), former chief of the defense staff, recently commented that in 1990, when he commanded an armored brigade, it was one of five stationed in Germany alone. Now the entire British army could not put one such brigade into the field, and there has been similar scaling down of air and naval forces. Last summer a paper from the Royal United Services Institute questioned whether the U.K. can any longer be seen as a major military power.
