16 Mar U.S. Military Withdraws Troops… From Iceland
16.03.06
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The U.S. is pulling almost all of its military forces out of Iceland. This is not exactly big news, except perhaps in Iceland itself, which has no other military force. Indeed, the Iceland government has actually been trying to convince the U.S. military to stay, but the U.S. (rightly, I think) has decided that Iceland is no longer a strategically important place.
Interestingly, the U.S. still has an agreement obligating it to provide defense arrangements with Iceland (the deservedly obscure 1951 agreement can be found here). Who knew that the U.S. defense perimeter included Iceland … or that a withdrawal of military forces from there would actually be unwelcome?
The original idea was that Greeland, Icelan, and the UK were important strategic locations for preventing Soviet Submarines from gaining access to the Atlantic during a war for both convoy prtection and to keep Soviet missile submarines away from the coast of the United States. Bases on Iceland also provided a taging location for fighter squadrons whose mission was to intercept Soviet bombers that were attempting to attack U.S. convoys crossing the Atlantic with equipment and troops to reinforce Europe.