14/04/2025
By James Foggo and Mila Tanghe
Source
Russia and China would respond to US base closures and troop withdrawals from Europe with “euphoria,” said Admiral (Ret.) James Foggo, Distinguished Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and former Commander of US Naval Forces Europe, NATO’s Joint Force Command Naples, and the US Sixth Fleet.
In a Q&A with the Center for European Policy Analysis, Foggo discussed the role of US military infrastructure in Europe — and what the United States risks losing if it withdraws from the continent.
CEPA: How would Russia and China interpret the US base closures and troop withdrawals in Europe?
Foggo: With euphoria, and they would view the United States as being weak. To pull out of Europe would imply that we can’t afford to be there anymore, and we can only do one theater at a time. My fear is that our allies, moreover, our adversaries would see us as a regional power focused only on the Indo-Pacific and not a global power focused on the Middle East, Africa, Europe, South America, anywhere where there are threats to our democracy and our lifestyle, or that of our like-minded allies, partners, and friends.
CEPA: Which US bases in Europe are most critical for military operations on and beyond the European continent, and which do you consider the most vital?
Foggo: I’m a naval officer and a submariner. I did 40 years in the Navy, so 12 years underwater, 12 years in the Pentagon, 12 years overseas. I had nine commands, which was a privilege. And my last command was what I called the Trifecta, which was Commander Naval Forces Europe, CINCUSNAVEUR, Commander Naval Forces Africa, all the Navy in Africa-US, and then Commander Allied Joint Force Command, Naples, Italy. That was the NATO command that went from the North Pole to Africa, to halfway across the Atlantic, to the shores of Iraq.
First of all, the headquarters in Naples, Italy. In Naples, we have the commander of the Sixth Fleet. That headquarters is a little microcosm of the United States and the United States Navy, located at Capodichino, which is a dual-use airport. It’s a big footprint.
As the four-star Commander of Naval Forces Europe and Africa, I had a headquarters there. As the commander of the NATO command, I was in Lago Patria in a brand new NATO base. So, to conduct NATO operations, US operations in Europe and US operations in Africa, all self-contained in one area in Naples, that’s not far apart. When we did a joint task force, Odyssey Dawn, the strikes in Libya that later became the NATO operation Unified Protector, that was nine months of operating in the Mediterranean against Gaddafi and his forces who were killing civilians. We operated out of the command ship, which was in Gaeta, north of Italy, and we operated at sea.
But we could not have done that without the Italians. When we did strike missions in Syria, the command and control for that was right there in Capodichino. So, invaluable real estate for us, forward deployed in the middle of the fight. You’re right in the middle of the Mediterranean. It got very, very busy.
The naval base in Rota. It grew from one destroyer when I got there to now five. They’re multi-mission, USS Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and they’re responsible for, at the time, European missile defense, the phased adaptive approach. So, Rota is very valuable. It has a big air base. You have pier space, so you can go in and moor alongside. Ships can go in for refit, medical emergencies, to refuel, get supplies, and do training. Our destroyers there are what we call Forward Deployed Naval Forces (FDNF). We have them in Japan, we have them in Rota. It is a jewel in the western part of the Mediterranean that gives us access to the Atlantic, access to the Med, access to the Baltic. It’s unsurpassed.
Then there’s Souda Bay, Crete. Crete is like a stationary aircraft carrier in the middle of the Mediterranean. You have an air base there, Iraklion, and you have a pier in a NATO facility, and the NATO Maritime Interdiction Operational Training Center. It’s for amphibious ships that are going into areas of conflict, like the Arabian Gulf, and Marines are trained to do hostile vessel boarding, search, and seizure. They also have a carrier pier. You don’t find many places where you can moor a Nimitz or a Ford-class carrier, because they are huge.
Sigonella in Sicily has a long history. We have an air base there that’s invaluable. We occupied the base as a NATO partner and ally of Italy. It’s another stationary aircraft carrier. During Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector, we had all the sorties flying out of that base, flying off of aircraft carriers, refueling and rearming, and going in and striking targets in Libya. In nine months, we did something like 19,000 sorties, that’s an individual flight. I think we dropped almost 10,000 precision-guided munitions to take Gaddafi’s 32nd Brigade and the military capacity away from him so he could not use it to kill civilians in Benghazi. That is an extraordinarily valuable base.
CEPA: Without missile defense in Redzikowo in Poland and Deveselu in Romania, what global threats become harder for the US to counter?
Foggo: I mentioned missile defense ashore. That’s called Aegis Ashore. There’s one in Romania, one in Poland.
The purpose is to knock down Iranian ballistic missiles. Back in 2014, when we were building the facility in Romania, and President Obama gave us a date of, I think, December 28, 2015, the thing will be done and ready for technical certification. It was a real rush. I would talk to the Europeans about it, and they’d go, so what’s the purpose of the base? And I would go, well, it’s to protect Europe against Iranian missiles. And a lot of people go, do you really think they’re going to do that? Nobody asks that today. Because what did the Iranians do? They’ve attacked Israel twice with 300 missiles aimed at Israel that we knocked down. Only 1% of those missiles got through. But they could also go on to Europe. So, I think people have gotten religion and understand the value of Aegis Ashore and Missile Defense Ashore.
Missile defense, whether it’s at sea on a destroyer or in Romania or Poland, is extremely important. And those bases are extremely important. That relationship is solidified by our presence on the ground. I don’t know what’s going to happen in this day and age, but you can’t surge trust. You have to build it over time. We have been there in Deveselu since 2014, and in Redzikowo since 2016. You can’t just build that trust in 48 hours. It takes time. That’s another important aspect of it.
CEPA: How would losing these air and naval hubs like Sigonella, Rota, Souda Bay impact US force projection in Africa and the Middle East.
Foggo: If you didn’t have those bases, we’d be hard-pressed to do maintenance on ships, to get spare parts to ships. The bases like Sigonella and Crete, and Rota also have a role as a transloading facility. If you’re flying a big C-17 aircraft across from the United States, it can go a long way, but it has to land someplace. If you were to bring cargo over and say a C-17 or a C-5 Galaxy, you could drop it in Rota, you could drop it in Heraklion, you could drop it in Sigonella, and it could move on later on, on a ship or on another aircraft. It’s a very valuable place for what we call transloading.
And for humanitarian supplies, when there’s a disaster, like the 2023 Turkish earthquake. You’ve got these places, vast open airstrips, that you can put the big dog of the United States of America with all of our equipment and all of our capacity, and stage for forward, follow-on forces.
If there was ever a war, you would want to pre-stage equipment, and you would have those places to do that.
The Greeks have Thessaloniki, which is a fuel hub where you can store fuel. They also have Alexandroupolis, which is a new port that’s getting a lot of notoriety. During the Ukraine war, some of the relief that was going in, whether it was military, non-military, was going to those two places and then moving on. So extremely valuable.
You would be hard-pressed to find another spot to be able to do that. This is an established footprint. We have people there. We have facilities, buildings, communications. We have a relationship with the local government, the mayors, the governors, the prime ministers, defense ministers.
CEPA: What unique advantages do US bases in Europe provide that Indo-Pacific or Middle East bases don’t?
Foggo: There is no NATO Alliance in the Pacific. Whereas we take for granted that we have access to these places like Sigonella or Rota or Crete, or Souda Bay. You don’t get that unfettered access in the Pacific because there’s no alliance that holds 32 nations and the Pacific together against the Chinese. That’s the first drawback right there. You have got to ask nicely instead of having a footprint and being able to go in there. Remember, we left the Philippines and regretted it because we couldn’t come to an agreement on host nation and basing agreements for keeping our air base at Clark or our ships at Subic Bay Naval Base. Once you leave, it’s very hard to get back in.