On the recordJune 13, 2013
I think we both have experience in NATO. You serve on this parliamentary committee, and I served in the United States Army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in the very type of unit that we are talking about today. That unit was designed to defend the border between what was West Germany and Czechoslovakia against Warsaw Pact forces that were on the other side. That border no longer exists. The Warsaw Pact no longer exists. Yet we still maintain a regiment there, which is not an expeditionary unit, to do the very things that you're talking about. We also have the capability to move our forces when needed over there. When I was in Europe during the height of the Cold War, protecting the very border in the same units that we are talking about today, we did the Reforger exercise on an annual basis in which U.S. forces would come over to Europe, in about the middle of western Germany, to reinforce our positions and to push those Warsaw Pact forces back.
