Each year since 1950, the U.S. Department of Defense has provided on its web site detailed information about the deployment of American troops around the world. A study of this data shows how the U.S. military's size and scope has changed over the past 35 years: from its peak in 1969 as a conscripted force of 2.4 million troops, heavily dispersed around the globe, to today's all-volunteer force of only 1.4 million, concentrated in a handful of countries.

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.

1969-1974 1975-1976 1977-1980 1981-1984

1985-1988 1989-1992 1993-1996 1997-2000 2001-2004

William J. Clinton Administration (1997-2000)

Note: Except where noted, troop deployments for each region are calculated as the mean of all years in a presidential administration.

The second Clinton administration continues to cut worldwide troops levels in many countries where it historically has maintained a stable, peaceful presence. From 1992 to 2000, troop levels in the United Kingdom fall from 20,000 to 11,000, and in Panama they fall from 10,000 to just 20. Meanwhile, the U.S. participates in a NATO-led war in Kosovo to stop the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian nationalists . The U.S. stations has as many as 13,500 troops in the surrounding countries (Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Serbia) at the height of the 1999 conflict.

At the same time, there is a build-up of U.S. forces in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia from 12,400 troops in 1997 to 29,800 troops in 1999 due to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors . The U.S. rushes aircraft carriers to the region and threaten strikes against Iraq. Some 5,500 troops are station in Saudi Arabia, another 4,000 in Kuwait and as many as 16,100 "afloat" in the area. Meanwhile, the U.S. launches a cruise missile attack on Afghanistan and Sudan in response to Osama bin Laden's embassy bombings, though no ground forces are used in the attacks.

A Note about the Data:
The Defense Department reports troop deployments at the end of each fiscal year on Sept. 30th. In the following maps, troop deployments are listed as the average, by region, for the four years of each presidential administration. The exceptions to this rule are the maps representing the Nixon and Ford administrations. Where a region's average does not adequately reflect the troop deployments over an entire administration (such as the average for East Asia and the Pacific during the Nixon administration), annual troop levels are listed instead. Whenever possible, the caption at the bottom of each map has tried to explain fluctuations in data that might skew the averages. Finally, when viewing these maps, it is important to keep in mind that the Defense Department regularly changes the names of it's geographical regions and the countries included in them. A color-coded system is used for national makeup of each region to help clarify this.