The split-basing problem justifying Vicenza expansion was self-inflicted

Evidence

And it gets worse. Remember that the Pentagon’s insistence on spending more than half a billion dollars on new construction in Vicenza hung on the idea that a new base would solve the problem of having the 173rd brigade divided between Italy and Germany. As I looked further, I realized that this “problem” was entirely of the Army’s own making. The 173rd brigade had been deactivated after the Vietnam War, and reactivated in 2000. After that reactivation, the 173rd spent about six years being based entirely in Vicenza—meaning that for the first half decade or more of its most recent life, there was no split-basing problem at all. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 769

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the book’s central argument that the base apparatus reflects its own internal logic and mission creep rather than external threats.