{"id":935212,"date":"2026-05-03T15:18:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T15:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/935212\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T15:18:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T15:18:22","slug":"top-republicans-warn-trumps-germany-troop-withdrawals-send-wrong-message-to-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/935212\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Republicans warn Trump’s Germany troop withdrawals send wrong message to Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two top Republican lawmakers expressed their concern Saturday about President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to withdraw 5,000 U.S. troops<\/a> from NATO ally Germany.<\/p>\n

\"NBC<\/p>\n

Subscribe to read this story ad-free <\/p>\n

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.<\/p>\n

\"arrow\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very concerned by the decision to withdraw a U.S. brigade from Germany,\u201d Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss, and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., respectively the heads of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, said in a joint statement.<\/a><\/p>\n

The president said Saturday that there could be more cuts to troops in Europe after the Pentagon announced the withdrawal. Trump told reporters: \u201cWe\u2019re going to cut way down, and we\u2019re cutting a lot further than 5,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision to slash troops came after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz\u00a0<\/a>told students earlier in the week that the U.S. was \u201cbeing humiliated by the Iranian leadership,\u201d unusually frank remarks that triggered a backlash from Washington. Almost 40,000 U.S. troops are currently stationed in Germany, the largest contingent in Europe.<\/p>\n

\"SenateSen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., expressed concern Saturday about President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Germany, in a joint statement with Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala.Tom Williams \/ CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images file<\/p>\n

Wicker and Rogers said it was in \u201cAmerica\u2019s interest to maintain a strong deterrent in Europe,\u201d warning about the signal it would send Russia to slash the American presence on the continent.<\/p>\n

European leaders have already expressed a renewed desire<\/a> to scale up their own independent defensive capabilities amid differences with the Trump administration on Ukraine<\/a>, Iran<\/a>, Greenland<\/a> and NATO<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Wicker and Rogers warned that even as spending is scaled up, \u201ctranslating that investment into the military capability needed to assume primary responsibility for conventional deterrence will take time.\u201d<\/p>\n

They added: \u201cPrematurely reducing America\u2019s forward presence in Europe before those capabilities are fully realized risks undermining deterrence and sending the wrong signal to Vladimir Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, allies made a commitment to investing 5% of gross domestic product annually<\/a> on defense by 2035.<\/p>\n

\"MikeRep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala.Tom Williams \/ CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images file<\/p>\n

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said in a statement Saturday the withdrawal of the troops was \u201cforeseeable,\u201d reiterating that \u201cEuropeans must assume more responsibility for our security.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was harsher language from some European leaders, with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk calling the rift between Europe and the U.S. a \u201cdisastrous trend,\u201d saying in a post on X: \u201cThe greatest threat to the transatlantic community are not its external enemies, but the ongoing disintegration of our alliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tusk signaled Sunday that the issue is likely to be on the agenda as European leaders meet for a summit in Yerevan, Armenia.<\/p>\n

He said the summit demonstrates that \u201ctransatlantic bonds and the European-American friendship are our common responsibility. And that there is no alternative to this. We need each other more than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats have also condemned the announcement. The House Armed Services Committee\u2019s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said the decision was \u201cnot grounded in any coherent U.S. national security policy\u201d and would \u201cembolden Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said the decision \u201cruns counter to the intent of the law that Congress passed overwhelmingly last year,\u201d referring to measures in the 2026 defense bill that restrict the Pentagon from unilaterally slashing troop levels in Europe below a threshold of 76,000 without approval.<\/p>\n

NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said the alliance is working with the U.S. to \u201cunderstand the details\u201d of its drawdown decision.<\/p>\n

For weeks, Trump has openly criticized NATO and European allies, including Germany, over what he sees as weak or absent support for the war with Iran. He has also suggested the U.S. could leave NATO, while members of his administration have also warned that the alliance cannot be a \u201cone-way street.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement Friday that the withdrawal would be completed over the next six months to a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision follows a thorough review of the Department\u2019s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two top Republican lawmakers expressed their concern Saturday about President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to withdraw 5,000 U.S. troops…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":935213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-935212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116511317849055941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935212","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=935212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/935213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}