\u201cThe Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,\u201d Merz said on Monday.<\/p>\n
Trump has threatened for years to draw down U.S. troop numbers in Germany, saying in his first term that he would cut 9,500. He failed to do so before former President Joe Biden entered office, at which point the plan was formally stopped.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the move was \u201canticipated.\u201d Even with the withdrawal, Germany will still host 30,000 American troops. Still, he told German news agency dpa that Germany welcomes the U.S. troop commitment.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThe presence of American troops in Europe, and particularly in Germany, lies in our interest and in the interest of the U.S.,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As Trump signals a shift in his priorities on Europe, several Republican lawmakers on the Armed Services Committee released a statement this weekend<\/a> declaring they were \u201cvery concerned\u201d over the troop withdrawal.
\u201cGermany has stepped up in response to President Trump\u2019s call for greater burden sharing, significantly increasing defense spending and providing seamless access, basing, and overflight for U.S. forces in support of Operation Epic Fury,\u201d said Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama in a joint statement<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":935490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824,28423,1757],"class_list":{"0":"post-935489","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","11":"tag-news-desk","12":"tag-trump"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116512059940163644","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935489","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=935489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/935490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}