The Geopolitics of U.S. Overseas Troops and Withdrawal

Why is it so difficult for a great power or a hegemon to retrench its overseas military power? Specifically, why are U.S. military bases and troops still largely where they were five years ago, twenty years ago, or even seventy years ago? Through developing a theory of great-power persistence, this book offers an explanation. Closely aligned with neoclassical realism, the theory argues that the murkiness of the anarchic international system combines with specific psychological inclinations of individuals to produce “better-safe-than-sorry” policies. In the United States, decisions on troop deployments are powerfully influenced by the broader foreign-policy community. Its members tend to be risk-averse and highly sensitive to the possibility that even minor troop withdrawals might set off harmful geopolitical chain reactions. Preferring the status quo over any uncertain alternative, they want their country to continue to maximize its influence and project its military power abroad inorder to steady wobbling geopolitical “dominoes.” The theory is put to the empirical test through a systematic analysis of U.S. overseas troop deployments, withdrawal attempts, and retrenchment resistance during the presidency of Donald Trump, which represents an ideal test case for these mechanisms. Even if U.S. voters elected a retrenchment advocate as president, and despite that the United States is a gradually declining power, the period saw very little change in U.S. overseas troop deployments. The book concludes that, barring any dramatic, unforeseeable international event, the vast network of overseas U.S. military bases and troops is likely to persist for a long time to come.

“The Geopolitics of US Overseas Troops and Withdrawal is a timely and important book. One of Jakobsen’s main contributions is to address the gaps between the prescriptions of realist critics of American foreign policy (especially the proponents of offshore balancing) and the actual record of the United States’ overseas military deployments over the past thirty years. A grand strategy of offshore balancing was never a viable option for Washington, not such more due to American exceptionalism or the dominance of the military-industrial complex, but rather due to the psychology of power politics. For reasons rooted in both an anarchic international system and the psychology of loss aversion, the members of the Washington foreign policy establishment are predisposed toward “better-safe-than-sorry” policy options to avert the mere possibility of setting off geopolitical dominoes. Hence, they tend to oppose any retrenchment initiatives, no matter how limited or seemingly sensible such retrenchment is given objective shifts in the international balance-of-power.” (Jeffrey W. Taliaferro,Professor, Tufts University, USA)

“The US military has been forward deployed across the world for over 70 years. Will it ever be withdrawn? Jo Jakobsen provides a powerful argument for why US leaders find it difficult to undertake meaningful retrenchment. Jakobsen provides an eclectic analysis of international-level forces, domestic politics, and human psychology to demonstrate how and why even the most ardent "Leavers" eventually succumb to arguments about the risks of retrenchment. His bookmakes important theoretical and empirical contributions to contemporary debates on US foreign policy by crystallizing the enormous challenges that faces America’s emerging coalition of ‘restrainers.’” (Peter Harris, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Colorado State University, USA)

“Here is a book that needs to be read. Jo Jakobsen draws on his expertise in International Politics to offer us a rare piece of work on geopolitics and great-power persistence. It is lucid, limpid, interesting, relevant and extremely important. With the rise of rest (particularly China) and decline of West (specially the US), the book is well-timed. This book is going to be on my‘must-read list’ for all my students.” (Krishna Vadlamannati, Associate Professor, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Ireland)

“A theoretically rich and empirically detailed account of the persistence of the overseas U.S. military presence, The Geopolitics of U.S. Troops and Withdrawalis an extremely important and timely work. Crossing traditional levels of analysis, Jakobsen explains why there has been very little change in U.S. military posture, even during the Trump administration despite Trump's transactional approach to alliances and his avowed interest in withdrawal. Scholars of security studies will need to contend with its arguments in any prognostications on U.S. security policy.” (Sebastian Schmidt, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, USA, and author of Armed Guests: Territorial Sovereignty and Foreign Military Basing)

“(1) Jakobsen has created an essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the enduring nature of US overseas deployments. (2) Jakobsen expertly blends realist and psychological explanations of why US troops remain overseas. (3) Jakobsen has created an essentialreading for anyone seeking to understand how structural and psychological pressures keep US troops overseas despite political desires in the US to bring them home and activist pushes abroad to send them back.” (Michael A. Allen, Associate Professor, Boise State University, USA)

“This fresh perspective on American foreign policy is as timely as it is poignant. Jakobsen’s thoughtful theoretical treatment and careful empirical analysis offer a compelling explanation for why US foreign policy seems to remain the same, despite the changes in leaders and their goals. Combining quantitative data and qualitative analysis of the Trump administration’s proposals, Jakobsen highlights how easy it is for what he calls “better-safe-than-sorry” foreign policies to perpetuate in the US, as well as other great powers.” (Mark David Nieman, Lecturer, University of Toronto, Canada)

“Jakobsen’s book achieves the dual purpose of proposing a general theory of why it is so difficult for the United States as a great power to retrench its global military presence, while also being one of the first academic foreign policy books to explain the unique Trump administration era and place it in a broader historical context. Jakobsen draws from qualitative and quantitative literatures and presents a novel theory that then allows him to create a holistic understanding of why the U.S. military base network is so difficult to downsize. This is a strong addition to the military basingand U.S. foreign policy literature that is likely to withstand the test of time.” (Carla Martinez Machain, Kansas State University, USA)

Jo Jakobsen is Professor at the Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway. His doctoral dissertation earned him the 2008 Prize for Young Excellent Researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences from the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters. He has since published widely in the fields of international security, geopolitical risk, and international political economy. He received the Bernard Brodie Prize for the best article published in Contemporary Security Policy in 2019.