{"id":9871,"date":"2026-05-03T07:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T07:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/9871\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T07:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T07:46:11","slug":"us-to-cut-troop-presence-in-germany-a-lot-further-than-5000-trump-says-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/9871\/","title":{"rendered":"US to cut troop presence in Germany \u2018a lot further than 5,000,\u2019 Trump says \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius earlier Saturday sought to downplay<\/a> the impact of Washington\u2019s decision to scale back its troop presence in the country, casting the move as anticipated and using it to underline Europe\u2019s need to take greater responsibility for its own security.<\/p>\n

NATO said it was \u201cworking with the U.S. to understand the details\u201d of the\u00a0Pentagon’s decision to pull the troops<\/a>. The move “underscores the need for Europe to invest more in defense,\u201d NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said in a statement.<\/p>\n

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the withdrawal in response to \u201cconditions on the ground\u201d after reviewing U.S. troop buildup in Europe, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement on Friday. The cuts would still leave around 33,000 American troops in Germany.<\/p>\n

Trump has also threatened to remove U.S. troops from Spain and Italy. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez and Italian leader Giorgia Meloni, like Germany’s Merz, have been critical of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.<\/p>\n

Speaking to\u00a0reporters in the Oval Office<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday, Trump said he would “probably” remove troops from Italy and Spain. He said Italy had “not been of any help to us,” and he accused Spain of being “absolutely horrible.”<\/p>\n

Victor Jack, Chris Lunday and\u00a0Rory O\u2019Neill contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius earlier Saturday sought to downplay the impact of Washington\u2019s decision to scale back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[420,479,393,5,253,8876,626,9104,481,2379],"class_list":{"0":"post-9871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-defense","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-friedrich-merz","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-pentagon","14":"tag-security","15":"tag-u-s-politics","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-war-in-iran"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9871","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=9871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}