Trump: US troops out of Germany

From END Info 18 | August 2020. Download here

Despite attempts to block the move (see END Info 17), President Trump has announced confirmed his intention to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany. Whilst the Pentagon insists the move is part of a long-term strategy of troop redeployment, Trump characterised it as “punishment” for Germany’s low levels of defence spending.

It looks likely that the US will transfer its European command centre to Brussels. The US Africa command centre looks set to be transferred from Stuttgart to an unknown location.

The Pentagon plans to expand the numbers and increase the rotation of US troops in Poland, the Baltics and Black Sea region. Some US commentators have claimed that withdrawal of troops from Germany would ‘please the Russians’ but transferring large numbers of troops closer to the Russian border hardly seems designed to please President Putin.

Rather, in the wake of the aborted Defender 2020 NATO ‘war game’, such re-deployment looks designed to increase tensions further.

How will Germany and other NATO ‘allies’ in Europe react? Will Germany and other states – which, contrary to Trump’s claims, already meet their NATO spending commitments – now invest more in ‘national security’? Will this move accelerate EU-wide military cooperation, joint-command and spending?