He pulls even harder on the rope with and , apparently confident that it won’t break.
With his new statements, in the early hours of Sunday, – for a reduction of 5,000 American soldiers from Germany – saying that he will not be satisfied with the number of 5,000 soldiers and that he will proceed with a much larger withdrawal of troops.
Speaking to reporters in South Florida before boarding Air Force One, Donald Trump said: “We’re going to reduce the number a lot, and we’re going to go much further than 5,000.”
This attitude of his raises new concerns about where the American President’s limit may be regarding his relations with Germany, Europe and the .
Reporter: Why is the U.S. removing troops from Germany?
Trump: We’re going to cut way down, and we’re cutting a lot further than 5000.
— Clash Report (@clashreport)
It is worth noting that Germany is the largest US military base in Europe and is considered an important training and logistics center.
As Tagesspiegel points out in its article, “this is also crucial for Germany, both in light of its fragile security architecture and as an economic factor.
“The presence of American soldiers in Europe, and especially in Germany, is in our interest and in the interest of the US,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Saturday.
“The withdrawal is symbolic rather than substantial”
From a purely military point of view, security experts consider the reduction in troop size tolerable: “The withdrawal of 5,000 American troops from Germany is more symbolic than substantive,” Carlo Massala, a security and defense expert at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, told Tagesspiegel.
And while the withdrawal of American troops does not seem to cause a particular problem in Berlin, on the contrary it creates a problem for the Americans: “Where will these troops be transferred. This is not clear. Will they return to the United States or move to Eastern Europe?’ says Masala.
“In the latter case, there would be the paradoxical result that Trump, who actually did not want to get close to Russia, would do just that,” he estimates.
Weakening or the end of NATO?
Thomas Klein-Brockhoff, Director of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and an expert on transatlantic security policy, sees “a course that he expected to be drawn by Donald Trump. He estimates that it is not only about the withdrawal of troops from Germany, but also about the weakening or even the end of NATO. “Trump almost – at least rhetorically – pulled out of NATO at the Brussels summit in 2018,” he notes.
More lost than the USA than Germany
According to the German website, even after the withdrawal of US troops, Germany would still host the second largest number of US troops in the world after Japan. At the same time, the US could hardly afford a permanent and large-scale withdrawal from Germany. The base is simply too important for Americans.
However, even a small reduction could have devastating consequences for the areas where US bases are located. After all, the US presence on the ground is sometimes an important economic factor.
Ramstein, in Rhineland-Palatinate, the largest US air base outside US territory, is home to about 9,000 US troops. Including civilian personnel, local workers and their families, the American community there numbers approximately 50,000 to 55,000.
According to the city’s mayor, Ralph Hechler, the economic power of Americans is estimated at about two billion dollars a year.
The strategic risk
But Trump’s announcement also carries a strategic risk according to Masala: “More important is the announcement that the agreement reached in June 2024 between Mertz’s predecessor, Olaf Scholz, and Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, to station the Tomahawk and Dark Eagle, once fully operational, at Mainz-Kastel is no longer valid.”
The Dark Eagle is a hypersonic missile system of the US Army, while Tomahawk missiles are a major offensive weapon of the US military.
This plan was agreed at the NATO summit in Washington in 2024 – and was aimed at strengthening conventional deterrence in Europe.
Now, the deployment of a battalion equipped with long-range conventional weapons, originally planned for 2026, has been suddenly cancelled.
“This creates a gap in contractual capabilities that weakens deterrence against Russia,” says the German expert who does not think Europe is capable of filling the gap.
“Herein lies the real problem”
“The Europeans joined forces in June 2024 to jointly develop cruise missiles with a range of more than 2,000 kilometers, but they have not gotten that far yet. The deployment of US cruise missiles was intended as an interim solution, which is no longer possible. In my opinion, this is where the real hard problem lies in terms of our security interests.”
