{"id":8308,"date":"2026-05-22T10:46:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T10:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/8308\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T10:46:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T10:46:06","slug":"rutte-and-polish-officials-cheer-trumps-u-turn-on-nato-troops-in-europe-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/8308\/","title":{"rendered":"Rutte and Polish officials cheer Trump\u2019s U-turn on NATO troops in Europe \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@realDonaldTrump\/posts\/116614442694237946\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">announced<\/a> the shift on Thursday night in a Truth Social post, saying the decision was linked to his admiration for Poland&#8217;s MAGA-aligned President Karol Nawrocki. <\/p>\n<p>That followed last week&#8217;s decision by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/poland-scrambles-respond-us-troop-decision\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">halt a planned deployment<\/a> of a 4,000-troop armored brigade to Poland \u2014 something that blindsided Poland, one of America&#8217;s most loyal European allies and one of NATO&#8217;s top defense spenders.<\/p>\n<p>Hegseth&#8217;s Poland move was linked to an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/05\/01\/hegseth-withdrawal-us-troops-germany-00903551\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">earlier decision by Trump<\/a> to punish German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for criticizing the war against Iran by removing 5,000 troops from Germany. <\/p>\n<p>Rutte on Friday stressed Trump&#8217;s latest deployment decision would not change NATO\u2019s longer-term push for \u201cEurope to be stronger\u201d so that, \u201cover time, step by step,\u201d European allies become less dependent \u201con a single ally, the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that direction of travel, hinting on Friday that further drawdowns of U.S. troops were in the works. But he insisted those reductions would not be reprisals \u2014 and would be coordinated with allies. The earlier moves in Poland and Germany caught European countries off guard.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe United States continues to have global commitments that it needs to meet in terms of our force deployment and that constantly requires us to reexamine where we put troops,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cThis is not a punitive thing, it\u2019s just something that\u2019s ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump announced the shift on Thursday night in a Truth Social post, saying the decision was linked to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[361,451,64,442,943,417,453,419,6542,940,323,5187,9,420,367,277,423,457,448],"class_list":["post-8308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-defense","tag-donald-trump","tag-donald-tusk","tag-eu-us-military-ties","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-germany","tag-iran","tag-karol-nawrocki","tag-marco-rubio","tag-mark-rutte","tag-nato","tag-pentagon","tag-poland","tag-polish-politics","tag-radoslaw-sikorski","tag-spain","tag-united-states","tag-war-in-iran","tag-wladyslaw-kosiniak-kamysz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}