The Pentagon said on Friday that the United States will withdraw about 5,000 troops from Germany within the next six to 12 months, fulfilling President Donald Trump’s earlier threat as he has clashed with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over Washington’s war with Iran. In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the decision followed a review of the department’s force posture in Europe and took into account “theater requirements and conditions on the ground.”
Parnell said the drawdown is tied to operational planning rather than politics, while the announcement landed amid an expanding dispute between Trump and Merz. Earlier this week, Trump threatened to pull troops from the NATO ally after Merz said the United States was being “humiliated” by Iran’s leadership and criticized Washington’s lack of strategy in the war.
The Pentagon said Germany hosts several U.S. military facilities, including the headquarters of Europe’s and Africa’s U.S. commands at Ramstein Air Base, and a medical center in Landstuhl that treated casualties from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The country also hosts U.S. nuclear missiles.
The Pentagon put the scale of the withdrawal at roughly 5,000 troops, which it described as about 14% of the 36,000 American service members currently stationed in Germany. The statement described the shift as part of a broader force posture review affecting how the United States prepares for missions and contingencies across theaters.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said it was “foreseeable” that the U.S. would withdraw troops from Europe and Germany, while emphasizing that the U.S. military presence provides mutual benefits. Pistorius told the German news agency dpa that “The presence of American soldiers in Europe, and especially in Germany, is in our interest and in the interest of the U.S.,” adding that European allies needed to adjust their defense postures and were doing so.
Pistorius also said, “We Europeans must take on more responsibility for our security,” pointing to Germany’s efforts to boost its armed forces, accelerate procurement and develop infrastructure. His comments underscored the central NATO question raised by the announcement: how quickly European states can compensate for a reduced U.S. footprint while managing multiple security priorities.
In the United States, the news prompted immediate pushback from Democrats in Congress as well as a hawkish Washington think tank. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the withdrawal would benefit Russian President Vladimir Putin and weaken U.S. security interests, saying, “The withdrawal ‘suggests American commitments to our allies are dependent on the president’s mood,’” and adding, “The president should immediately cease this reckless action before he causes irreversible consequences for our alliances and long-term national security.”
Bradley Bowman, a scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argued that the U.S. military presence in Germany and elsewhere in Europe plays a role in deterrence. Bowman said the presence “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 questions from reporters about the withdrawal on Friday as he boarded Air Force One in Ocala, Florida, after a rally to promote his economic agenda. The Pentagon’s announcement also followed Trump’s social media posts this week indicating he was reviewing possible troop reductions in Germany, with a “determination” expected soon.
The U.S.-Germany troop debate has been present during Trump’s first term, when he threatened to pull about 9,500 troops from Germany but did not begin the process. Democratic President Joe Biden stopped the planned withdrawal soon after taking office in 2021. Allies in NATO have also been bracing for changes since Trump took office, as Washington warned Europe it would need to handle its own security, including that of Ukraine, in the future.
The Pentagon’s withdrawal plan comes as NATO faces multiple military timelines and reinforcements. Depending on operations, exercises and troop rotations, between 80,000 and 100,000 U.S. personnel are usually stationed in Europe, and NATO allies had expected for more than a year that the U.S. troops deployed after Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine began in February 2022 would be among the first to leave.
Separately, Europe has also been weighing other U.S. adjustments, including concerns about potential redeployment of Patriot missile systems and ammunition from Germany to the Middle East, according to Ed Arnold, a European security expert at the Royal United Services Institute in London. In October, the U.S. confirmed it would reduce its troop presence on NATO’s borders with Ukraine, cutting 1,500 to 3,000 troops on short notice and unsettling NATO ally Romania, where the military organization runs an air base.