{"id":48255,"date":"2025-04-25T02:51:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T02:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/48255\/"},"modified":"2025-04-25T02:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T02:51:08","slug":"europe-shows-withdrawal-symptoms-after-75-years-of-addiction-to-us-troops-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/48255\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe shows withdrawal symptoms after 75 years of addiction to US troops \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I am sure that there will be some reduction of U.S. presence in Europe,&#8221; said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Estimates of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.everycrsreport.com\/files\/2024-12-23_IF12277_781e38e28aa1365403ebd2f3cf3e04457073b90e.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">number of U.S. forces<\/a> in Europe range from 70,000<strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/meflynn\/troopdata\/tree\/master\/R\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">permanent troops<\/a><\/strong> to 90,000. But all estimates show a marked decrease from the 1950s, during the Cold War&#8217;s most tense years, when over 400,000 U.S. troops <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cfr.org\/article\/where-are-us-forces-deployed-europe#:~:text=In%20Europe%2C%20there%20are%20two,states%20under%20a%20single%20command.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">were stationed<\/a> on the continent.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>According to analysts and current and former U.S. military officers, withdrawing \u2014\u00a0or even reducing \u2014 American troop numbers in Europe would significantly reduce deterrence against Russia and cost money to both Europeans and Americans. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iwkoeln.de\/studien\/klaus-heiner-roehl-hubertus-bardt-geld-personal-und-zeitprobleme-als-sicherheitspolitische-herausforderungen-fuer-die-deutsche-verteidigungsindustrie.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A report<\/a>\u00a0from Germany\u2019s Economic Institute (IW Cologne) warned this week that it could take 10 to 12 years for Europe to replace key U.S. military capabilities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s my advice to maintain that force posture as it is now,\u201d U.S. European Command chief Gen. Christopher Cavoli, who&#8217;s also NATO&#8217;s supreme allied commander Europe, <a href=\"https:\/\/pro.politico.eu\/news\/196905\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told U.S. lawmakers<\/a> earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We collectively require a heavy ground presence, specifically to overcome that singular Russian advantage of being be able to put their forces at our border,&#8221; he said, adding that reducing the U.S. presence in Europe would inevitably &#8220;slow&#8221; a response to a Russian attack.<\/p>\n<p>Cavoli retires this summer and Washington <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/national-security\/trump-admin-considers-giving-nato-command-exclusively-american-eisenho-rcna196503\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">is reportedly mulling<\/a> abandoning the NATO command after he leaves \u2014 allowing a European to take the job for the first time since the alliance was founded in 1949.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;I am sure that there will be some reduction of U.S. presence in Europe,&#8221; said retired Lt. Gen.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[7703,6904,7668,26253,14787,473,32,1112,7704,805,1824,2199,714,1113,1114,23762,2597,2821,8723,770,1438,332,2824,1771,657,49,978,659,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-48255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-artillery","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-boris-pistorius","11":"tag-christopher-cavoli","12":"tag-cold-war","13":"tag-defense","14":"tag-donald-trump","15":"tag-estonia","16":"tag-eu-us-military-ties","17":"tag-foreign-policy","18":"tag-germany","19":"tag-italy","20":"tag-joe-biden","21":"tag-latvia","22":"tag-lithuania","23":"tag-logistics","24":"tag-military","25":"tag-nato","26":"tag-pentagon","27":"tag-poland","28":"tag-romania","29":"tag-russia","30":"tag-tanks","31":"tag-u-s-foreign-policy","32":"tag-ukraine","33":"tag-united-states","34":"tag-us","35":"tag-usa","36":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114396337588974783","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}