If any nation deserves US Protectorate Status.. It is Poland if they will accept it. Why send money to Germany by keeping troops there when we can invest it in Poland keeping troops there again with there permission of course.
W
This is a good point. Simply ask the Poles if they are willing to pass you an alternative to Ramstein and then move your troops there.
There might be a big problem. Most European countries (that includes eastern Europe) do not want such a immense American deployment for political reasons. Although there would be some local whining in Germany about the economical loss (which would not be that impressive anymore - the US deployment will be reduced to 25.000 soldiers until 2014 anyway), most German politicians would be quite happy to do without those bases since they are a continuous limit to German sovereignty. Ramstein is somehow the continuation of the occupation after WWII. It is not politically correct to say this, but it is the plain truth. Through those bases Germany was i.e. involved into the war in Iraq although the German gouvernment and practically all German people (there were only a fistful German supporters of the war in Iraq*) were politically against it. If Germany would have closed its airspace in 2003/2004 for American operations in correlation with Iraq the trans-atlantic relationship would have been over. This was the reason why Schroeder and most other Germans were forced to tolerate that German soil was being (mis)used (in the view of the vast German majority) as an "aircraft-carrier" for the Iraq war. Since the cold war is over those bases are not needed for the German security anyway. They are simply a American outpost for operations in the ME and elsewhere in this world. The Poles are well aware of this and I doubt that they want to take over the German role in this game.
* That includes me although I also dismiss the offical justification for this attack. I simply think that the elemination of Saddam Hussein was reason enough.