The Pentagon said Friday it will pull about 5,000 troops from Germany over the next six to 12 months, a 14 percent reduction that delivers on President Donald Trump’s threat to retaliate against the NATO ally for its leader’s criticism of the U.S.-led war with Iran.
The withdrawal announcement came three days after Trump said on social media that the administration was reviewing possible troop reductions in Germany and that a “determination” would be made soon. His threat followed remarks by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who had said Washington was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and lacked a strategy in the war. Trump responded Thursday by posting that Merz should “spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine” and “fixing his broken Country” than concerning himself with Iran.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that the decision “follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground.” The statement did not specify which units would be withdrawn nor give a precise timeline.
Germany hosts several key U.S. military installations, including the headquarters of U.S. European Command and Africa Command, Ramstein Air Base, and the Landstuhl medical center. U.S. nuclear weapons are also stationed in the country.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told the German news agency dpa that the move was “foreseeable” and acknowledged that U.S. and German interests were intertwined. “The presence of American soldiers in Europe, and especially in Germany, is in our interest and in the interest of the U.S.,” Pistorius said. He added that European allies needed to adjust their defense postures and that Germany was doing so: “We Europeans must take on more responsibility for our security,” he said, pointing to recent German efforts to accelerate arms procurement and develop military infrastructure.
In Washington, the withdrawal drew immediate pushback from Democratic lawmakers. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the move “suggests American commitments to our allies are dependent on the president’s mood” and called on Trump to “immediately cease this reckless action before he causes irreversible consequences for our alliances and long-term national security.”
Bradley Bowman, a scholar at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argued that the U.S. military presence in Germany “not only strengthens deterrence against additional Kremlin aggression but also facilitates the projection of American military power into the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Africa.”
Trump did not address the withdrawal when reporters shouted questions at him Friday as he boarded Air Force One in Ocala, Florida, following a rally to promote his economic agenda.
The president has mused for years about shrinking the American military footprint in Germany. During his first term, he threatened to pull roughly 9,500 of the then-34,500 troops stationed there, but the process never began, and President Joe Biden formally halted the planned withdrawal after taking office in 2021.
The troop reduction announced Friday is the latest in a series of U.S. drawdowns from Europe. Last October, Washington confirmed it would cut 1,500 to 3,000 troops from NATO’s eastern flank on short notice, unsettling ally Romania. Trump’s administration has repeatedly warned that Europe will have to assume primary responsibility for its own security, including the defense of Ukraine.
NATO allies have braced for a U.S. withdrawal since Trump took office. Depending on operations and rotations, roughly 80,000 to 100,000 U.S. personnel are stationed in Europe, and member states have expected for more than a year that troops deployed after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 would be the first to leave. European officials have expressed particular concern about the possible redeployment of Patriot missile systems and ammunition from Germany to the Middle East, according to Ed Arnold, an expert in European security at the Royal United Services Institute in London.