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Broken down by administration, this data reveals how different administrations have approached geopolitical conflict. For instance, almost 750,000 U.S. troops were present in the East Asia and Pacific theater at the height of the Vietnam War, but when America declared war on Iraq twenty years later, only about 70,000 troops were deployed. When the U.S. participated in the NATO-lead war in Kosovo in 1999, air strikes were substituted for large numbers of ground forces and no more than 13,500 troops were in the immediate area-that is a fraction of the more than 200,000 troops deployed in the Middle East as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. |
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Ronald R. Reagan Administration (1985-1988) Note: Except where noted, troop deployments for each region are calculated as the mean of all years in a presidential administration. In 1984, the U.S. renews diplomatic relations with Iraq, and as a result, eight American troops are stationed there for the first time since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War . On the other side of world, the U.S. increases troop deployments to its military bases in the Philippines every year during Reagan's presidency. The military hopes to establish a counterweight to the nearby Soviet naval base because it fears a communist-backed coup of the unpopular American-supported Marcos regime. There are more than 16,000 American troops present in the Philippines in 1986, when Marcos is peacefully voted out of office and sent into exile . Meanwhile, African, Middle Eastern and South Asian troop levels for the Reagan years peak at 20,000 in 1987 - the same year that the U.S. conducts air strikes against Libya, the North African nation suspected of terrorist attacks . Total worldwide troop deployments continue to rise during the second Reagan administration, reaching a post-Vietnam high of 2,174,217 troops in 1987.
A Note about the Data: |
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