German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is in the doghouse with President Donald Trump. On April 27 he told German high school students that the Trump administration had “no strategy” in its negotiations to end the war with Iran, asserting that Iran’s team had “humiliated” the Americans. At the end of the week, Pentagon officials suddenly announced plans to pull 5,000 troops from Germany. Coincidence or another case of retaliation against a European ally?
The following day Trump raised the ante, telling reporters that the cuts would go “a lot further than 5,000.” Trump claimed, “Merz doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Reports suggest that European officials privately indicated that they were blindsided by the cuts and were payback for Merz’s criticism, as well as European failure to support the attacks on Iran.
Merz and his colleagues promptly went into damage control mode. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius asserted that the move was “foreseeable,” and both German and U.S. officials claimed that the troop withdrawal had been in the works for months as part of a worldwide review of troop levels. Yet the timing was accelerated to placate an irate Trump.
Despite this exercise in the diplomacy of petulance, the facts bear out the notion that there has been a plan to withdraw a combat brigade stationed in Germany in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. But relations between allies normally would have involved a warning that a troop announcement was imminent. Indeed, when Merz visited Trump in March, he told reporters that Trump “has also assured me not just today, but once again, that the United States will maintain its military presence in Germany.”
The loss of 5,000 troops alone is not catastrophic. The United States currently deploys around 36,000 troops in Germany, more than any foreign country other than Japan. These forces are not stationed in Germany merely as a favor to Germany. They are stationed there pursuant to U.S. military needs to serve U.S. policy goals. They include the headquarters of European Command and Africa Command, along with training sites. Landstuhl Regional Medical Center is the largest American military medical center outside the United States, serving both European and Central Command, as does the Air Force transportation hub at Ramstein.
Eric Edelman and Franklin Miller, former senior defense officials in the George W. Bush administration, have written that “our forces stationed on allied soil are in fact critical U.S. military enablers, not trading cards or transactional toys, with host nations to be rewarded for good behavior or threatened with base closure as punishment.”
In response to Trump’s threats, the heads of the congressional House and Senate Armed Services committees — Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala.— said in a statement that they were “very concerned by the decision to withdraw a U.S. brigade from Germany.” They warned that such withdrawal risks “undermining deterrence and sending the wrong signal to [Russian President] Vladimir Putin.”
These congressional committee chairs clearly are aware that the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act prohibits the Defense Department from reducing the number of U.S. troops stationed in Europe below 76,000 without congressional approval. While a 5,000-troop reduction would not trigger this oversight, the “further cuts” threatened by the president could hit the floor.
The president’s pique with Germany has a deeper dimension. Germany faces a gap in its missile defense systems, experiencing a delay of seven to 10 years in developing its planned long-range strike system. In 2024, the Biden administration reportedly promised U.S. long-range missiles for delivery in 2027, including Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-6 missiles that can be fired from mobile launchers. This bridge system, called “Typhon,” was again requested of the Trump administration ten months ago. The Pentagon still has not cleared the order.
Has the order been canceled? The rapid depletion of Tomahawks due to the Iran war suggests a stress on stockpiles. The Pentagon has not confirmed cancellation but is using the euphemism “reassigned.” Analysts describe the situation as “confused,” perhaps reflecting disagreement between a White House desire to further punish Germany and a Pentagon and congressional preference for deploying the system.
In addition to the challenges facing Germany, Trump has revealed grudges against other European allies lingering in the wake of their failure to join the bandwagon in taking military action against Iran, even though they were not consulted prior to the attacks by the U.S. and Israel and did not favor the war. Spain and Italy may be on the troop reduction menu before long. By contrast, Germany at least allowed its bases to be used to launch attacks on Iran.
As the saga of withdrawing troops from Germany percolated, Washington received a visit from Britain’s King Charles III. In his address to a joint session of Congress, Charles recalled the founding of NATO, and its invocation of Article 5 to come to the aid of the United States in the wake of the attacks of 9/11, when its members “answered the call together.”
The king’s strong support for NATO, as well as for the defense of Ukraine, was met with raucous applause. Let’s hope that applause continues to ring in the ears of our leaders who can insist on protecting our national interests and not chasing vendettas inconsistent with those interests.
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