The US has ordered the withdrawal of roughly 5,000 troops from Germany, following president Donald Trump’s threats to reduce the American military presence in the country, as tensions escalate over the war with Iran.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement on Friday that defence secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered the withdrawal.
“This decision follows a thorough review of the department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theatre requirements and conditions on the ground,” Parnell said.
“We expect the withdrawal to be completed over the next six to 12 months.”
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Parnell did not respond to specific questions about whether the personnel would be repositioned elsewhere in Europe.
The US plans were first reported earlier Friday by CBS News, which cited senior defence officials it did not name. Those officials cast the move as a demonstration of the president’s frustration with European allies who have baulked at his calls to do more to assist the US and Israel in their war on Iran, the report said.
Trump on Wednesday had said he was reviewing troop levels in Germany with an eye toward reducing those numbers. That announcement came just days after German chancellor Friedrich Merz questioned Trump’s handling of the Iran war in unusually blunt terms, saying the administration was being “humiliated”.
Some 35,000 troops – almost half the total of US forces in Europe – are stationed in Germany, where the US command for the region is headquartered. The US has relied heavily on its extensive network of bases and other facilities in Germany, a legacy of the cold war, to prepare and launch operations against Iran.
Trump’s order is likely to face opposition in Congress. His last attempt to remove forces from Germany in 2020 was blocked by legislative opposition.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the armed services committee, said in a statement that Trump “should immediately reverse this foolish decision”.
“Withdrawing thousands of American troops from one of our most important strategic positions in the middle of a war is a serious mistake that will reverberate well beyond this moment.”
The move is Trump’s latest challenge to the Nato alliance, whose other members he has long accused of not doing enough to pay for their own defence. More recently, he threatened to take Greenland from alliance partner Denmark and criticised allies for not doing more to help in the Iran campaign.
Earlier this week, Germany’s Merz questioned how Trump planned to end the conflict. “The Americans obviously have no strategy,” Merz said.
Trump then took to Truth Social, his social media site, to vent.
“The United States is studying and reviewing the possible reduction of Troops in Germany, with a determination to be made over the next short period of time,” he wrote on Thursday.
Later, he added: “The Chancellor of Germany should spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine (Where he has been totally ineffective!), and fixing his broken Country, especially Immigration and Energy, and less time on interfering with those that are getting rid of the Iran Nuclear threat, thereby making the World, including Germany, a safer place!”
On Friday, while announcing the troops decision, a senior Pentagon official said that Germany’s failure to contribute to the Iran war effort had frustrated the United States, and that the country’s rhetoric was inappropriate and unhelpful.
The announcement, and the criticism of Germany, represents a shift for Pentagon officials, who recently had praised Germany’s efforts to increase military spending and take over more of the burden of supporting Ukraine.
German foreign minister Johann Wadephul had played down Trump’s earlier warning, saying on Thursday that his government would take a “calm” look at the possibility of reducing US forces.
“The US needs these bases,” he said, citing the key facilities of Ramstein, Landstuhl and Grafenwohr.
Germany provides land for the bases rent-free, as well as staff to support the American forces.
Even if the Pentagon pulls 5,000 troops out of Germany, the country would still host the second-largest US troop presence in the world, at more than 30,000, behind only Japan. – Bloomberg, The New York Times
