MUNSTER, Germany (AP) \u2014 U.S. President Donald Trump has again threatened to pull American troops out of Germany, a key NATO ally and the European Union\u2019s largest economy. Europeans have heard this before.<\/p>\n
Trump’s threats came after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in comments this week that the U.S. was being \u201chumiliated\u201d by Tehran in negotiations to end the Iran war.<\/p>\n
The mercurial U.S. leader has mused for years about reducing the American military presence in Germany, and has railed against NATO for its refusal to assist Washington in the war, which began on Feb. 28 with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n
Trump wrote Wednesday on social media that the U.S. was reviewing possible troop reductions in Germany, with a \u201cdetermination\u201d to be made soon. On Thursday, he was still thinking about Merz, posting that the German leader should \u201cspend more time on ending the war with Russia\/Ukraine\u201d and \u201cfixing his broken Country\u201d than concerning himself with Iran.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUS military presence in Europe<\/p>\n
American allies in NATO have braced for a U.S. troop withdrawal since just after the Trump administration took office, with Washington warning Europe would have to look after its own security, and that of Ukraine, in the future.<\/p>\n
Depending on operations, exercises and troop rotations, around 80,000-100,000 U.S. personnel are usually stationed in Europe. NATO allies have expected for more than a year that U.S. troops deployed after Russia launched its all-out war on Ukraine in February 2022 would be first to leave.<\/p>\n
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 wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq were treated. U.S. nuclear missiles are also stationed in the country.<\/p>\n
Ed Arnold, an expert in European security at the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, in London, said that the U.S. gets a lot out of its presence in Germany \u2014 like logistics and support for Middle East combat operations \u2014 and was unlikely to withdraw.<\/p>\n
Nico Lange from the Center of European Policy Analysis agreed, and said that there are approximately 36,000 U.S. soldiers in Germany who primarily serve U.S. interests, including \u201cthe projection of American power globally,\u201d rather than helping with the defense of Germany. <\/p>\n
The U.S. has invested \u201csubstantial funds\u201d in high-quality infrastructure in Germany that can’t be moved overnight, and a different deployment would cost Washington a huge amount of money, which would require Trump to get approval from U.S. Congress, Lange said. <\/p>\n
As early as 2020, Trump announced plans to withdraw 11,900 U.S. troops from Germany, but that didn’t happen partly because U.S. Congress didn’t provide the necessary funds and a withdrawal would have required enormous investments elsewhere.<\/p>\n
That’s why Trump\u2019s post is most likely \u201cbluster,\u201d Arnold said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a difference between the military view and the political view,\u201d Arnold said. \u201cThe issue with some of these threats is that they are not quite as galling as they were a couple of years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Merz, visiting troops Thursday at a military training area in Munster, in northern Germany, didn’t directly address Trump\u2019s comments, but alluded to working \u201cshoulder to shoulder for mutual benefit and in deep trans-Atlantic solidarity,\u201d and said that his government has \u201cmade great efforts to strengthen Germany\u2019s security.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arnold, the expert at RUSI, said that Europe is more concerned about issues like a U.S. redeployment of Patriot missile systems and ammunition from Germany to the Middle East, and notifications to NATO countries such as Estonia and Belgium that orders for American weapons will be delayed as the U.S. government is prioritized.<\/p>\n
A senior Western official told The Associated Press that they weren’t aware of any discussions between the U.S. and Germany or other allies regarding the possibility of troop reductions in Germany.<\/p>\n
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said that Europe and Germany, which recently announced its new military strategy, is taking more responsibility for security on the continent. <\/p>\n
In October, the U.S. confirmed that it would reduce its troop presence on NATO\u2019s borders with Ukraine. The move to cut 1,500-3,000 troops came on short notice and unsettled NATO ally Romania, where the military organization runs an air base.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAs Russia looks on, Iran war has had an impact<\/p>\n
The U.S. administration informed the allies early last year that it has been reviewing its military \u201cposture\u201d in Europe and elsewhere. The findings of that review had been due to be made public in late 2025, but still haven’t surfaced.<\/p>\n
However, the U.S. did commit to inform its allies in advance about any changes to ensure that no security gap is created at a time when Russia is increasingly confrontational.<\/p>\n
The Iran war only made the prospect of a withdrawal more likely, and a flurry of meetings has been held between administration officials, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and European leaders since the conflict started more than two months ago.<\/p>\n
Over the last year, European allies and Canada have understood that they will have to provide Europe\u2019s conventional defenses. The main U.S. contribution to NATO deterrence going forward will be the presence of American nuclear weapons and some troops.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTrump’s Greenland fixation<\/p>\n
Beyond the uncertainty over U.S. personnel, the allies have become accustomed to Trump\u2019s outbursts, having weathered insults as \u201ccowards\u201d or hearing NATO branded as a \u201cpaper tiger\u201d by their most powerful ally in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
Repeated threats to leave altogether, or over things like defense spending, have inured them to social media posts that Trump might be considering some action or another.<\/p>\n
The real damage to NATO unity was done by Trump\u2019s fascination over Greenland, and his intent to annex the island, which is a semiautonomous part of ally Denmark, including sending family members and administration officials there.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Emma Burrows reported from London, and Lorne Cook from Brussels. Jamey Keaten in Geneva, and Aamer Madhani in Washington, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MUNSTER, Germany (AP) \u2014 U.S. President Donald Trump has again threatened to pull American troops out of Germany,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1338,1339,8681,955,953,5],"class_list":{"0":"post-9066","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-ap-business","9":"tag-ap-politics","10":"tag-ap-washington-news","11":"tag-ap-world-news","12":"tag-associated-press","13":"tag-germany"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}