As last week got underway, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz decided to offer some candid assessments about developments in the Middle East. The United States, Merz argued, was in the process of being “humiliated” by Iranian leaders. Around the same time, the German leader added: “It is quite obvious that the Americans have absolutely no coherent strategy whatsoever.”
To the surprise of no one, Donald Trump responded quickly in decidedly Trumpian ways.
Two days after the chancellor’s public criticisms, Trump announced that he was “studying and reviewing the possible reduction of Troops in Germany,” as part of an apparent retaliatory move after Merz hurt Trump’s feelings. The day after that, the American president used his social media platform to condemn Germany, a key NATO ally, as a “broken Country.”
As last week came to an end, the Trump administration announced that it would withdraw roughly 5,000 troops from Germany over the course of the next year. The Associated Press reported:
Germany hosts several U.S. military facilities, including the headquarters of its European and Africa commands, Ramstein Air Base and a medical center in Landstuhl, where casualties from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were treated. U.S. nuclear missiles are also stationed in the country.
The number of troops leaving Germany would be 14% of the 36,000 American service members stationed there.
There’s a lot to this, so let’s unpack some of the key details.
This is the start of a presidential tantrum, not the end of one: Trump told reporters late Friday that he intends to cut U.S. troop deployments in Germany “a lot further” than 5,000. Hours earlier, a reporter asked whether he was considering pulling U.S. troops out of Spain and Italy, too, since its leaders also recently hurt Trump’s feelings. “Yeah, probably,” he replied. “Why shouldn’t I?”
The Pentagon reportedly didn’t see this coming: Politico reported last week that Trump’s threats, preceding Friday’s announcement, “stunned defense officials.”
The Putin angle: The same Politico report noted that Trump’s initial threat “came hours after he spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long sought to reduce the number of NATO troops in Europe.” The American president has been going to scandalous lengths to please Moscow, and the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Germany belongs on the same list.
The pushback on Capitol Hill has been relatively bipartisan: While Democratic officials were quick to condemn the administration’s move, they weren’t alone, as some congressional Republicans agreed that the redeployments are a mistake.
This won’t help our geopolitical interests: In an opinion piece for The New York Times, Linas Kojala, the chief executive of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center in Lithuania, argued persuasively that Trump’s move “risks weakening one of America’s best strategic investments: a military presence that deters Russia and keeps Europe’s old rivalries from becoming America’s problem again.”
All of this seems oddly familiar: It’s easy to forget, but it was around this time six years ago when Trump, to the delight of the Kremlin, announced even more dramatic cuts to U.S. troop deployments in Germany, blindsiding the Pentagon and much of his own team, after then-Chancellor Angela Merkel hurt his feelings by declining his invitation to a G-7 gathering at Camp David.
The Republican president did not, however, immediately follow through on his own announced decision. And by the time the administration took steps to implement Trump’s plan, he lost his 2020 re-election bid, and Joe Biden wasted little time in scrapping his predecessor’s plan.
History is repeating itself — except this time, Trump has plenty of time remaining in his term to actually execute the vision that he and Putin prefer.
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