Trump’s explanation to reporters on the withdrawal, announced Wednesday morning by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, misrepresented how NATO works and contradicted its own military officers, raising questions about what strategy, if any, led the decision.
Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah described Trump’s move as “a gift to Russia” and a “slap in the face of a friend and ally.” Romney added that “the consequences will be lasting and detrimental to American interests.”
Representative Mac Thornberry of Texas, the leading Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said aspects of the measure, including the limitation of US personnel in Germany, were “troubling.”
Rachel Rizzo, program director for the Truman National Security Project, which specializes in European security, said: “It is difficult, if not impossible, to see any benefit.”
Counterproductive
Former United States Army Commander General in Europe, retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, said in a tweet that he was “sick with this decision and explanation. It is not tied to any strategic advantage and is, in fact, counterproductive in showing strength in Europe”. “
And retired admiral of the United States Navy Jim Stravidis, the former top military commander in Europe and NATO, said in a tweet that “abruptly withdraw 12,500 troops from Germany (to put half of them in countries that spend LESS in defense) makes no financial sense, harms NATO solidarity in general and is a gift to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. ”
The removal of US troops from Germany takes them out of a central location with a sophisticated logistics and transportation network that accelerates the movement of troops and equipment in Europe and beyond, allowing a powerful counterweight to Russia, analysts say.
Reducing the US footprint in Germany could waste billions spent on recent upgrades to US military installations there and require spending billions more to replicate those resources elsewhere. Among other things, military analysts also say that replacing permanent troops with rotating forces can make training with host countries more challenging and create morale problems.
Trump himself seemed to underline that thinking on Wednesday, saying the troop cuts had to do with Berlin’s failure to meet defense spending targets and not with the strategic reasons Esper put forward when he announced the move, which included countering to Moscow.
The president recently spoke to Putin last Friday, the latest in a series of phone calls that CNN’s Marshall Cohen has documented as the most sustained period of publicly revealed contact between the two leaders. In an interview published Wednesday, Trump told Axios that in that conversation, he did not raise US intelligence, alleging that Moscow offered rewards to Taliban fighters for killing US troops in Afghanistan.
It is unclear whether the two leaders discussed Trump’s plan to reduce the United States’ military presence in Germany, intended to be a bulwark against possible Russian aggression. But after Esper announced the withdrawal of troops, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said “Champagne should flow freely in the Kremlin tonight.”
Esper explained that the current plan is to move approximately 11,900 soldiers from Germany, reducing the number from approximately 36,000 to 24,000. Of the troops leaving Germany, some 5,400 will “stay in Europe,” said a senior US defense official. The remaining 6,400 forces and their families will be returned to the US, and will eventually be redistributed to Europe.
While Esper said the move was intended to help deter Russia, none of the US troops appeared to be being permanently relocated to countries closer to NATO’s eastern border with Russia, despite applications from those countries for a long time.
Italy and Belgium
The president of one of those countries, Lithuania, posted on Twitter: “We are ready to accept more US troops.”
But the vast majority of the troops that remain permanently in Europe will be relocated to Italy or Belgium, not published in the countries most concerned about the Russian threat.
“There are or may be other opportunities to move additional forces to Poland and the Baltic as well,” Esper said, without offering much in detail.
Withdrawing US troops from Germany takes them from what Jeff Rathke, president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University, calls “the best place from which they can operate. The German logistics network, which states United they can access, it is very sophisticated: airfields and bases, the rail network, which allows the United States to move equipment. ”
Germany is also “a central location from which the United States can move,” Rathke said. Noting the combination of Germany’s location along with its transportation and logistics, Rathke said: “You can’t replicate that elsewhere. They don’t exist in Poland or further east.”
Menendez noted in a statement that Germany not only allows “a greater forward-looking effort in Eastern Europe to counter Russia,” but also “for the security interests of the United States in the Middle East and Africa.”
“That platform is not easily replicated elsewhere,” said Menéndez.
There’s also the question of how much this will cost American taxpayers in a time of record-setting US budget deficits. The military measure will potentially cost “several billion dollars,” Esper said Wednesday.
The Pentagon would be moving away from the billions spent between 2004 and 2011 on improvements to secure and consolidate key U.S. military locations in Germany, Hertling said, only to have to replicate facilities such as homes, schools, headquarters, and headquarters in new locations. .
Rathke points out that there are also costs to bring troops back to the United States. “If you are going to bring people from Germany, where are you going to put them and if it has been budgeted, either for housing or the basic infrastructure for these people returning from Europe.”
NATO said in a statement that the announcement “underscores the United States’ continued commitment to NATO and European security.”
But Hertling said, “What is obvious to me: having turned 12 in Germany and participating in the last change in force structure between 2004 and 2011, is not a ‘strategic’ move.” Instead, he said, “It is detrimental and affects preparation … especially when all of this happens without a prior plan.”
‘Punish Merkel’
Furthermore, Hertling was one of many who argued that the president’s decision is “to punish Merkel” and “is specifically a personal insult directed by Trump at our great and very ally Germany ally.”
Agathe Demarais, director of global forecasting for The Economist Intelligence Unit, said the move is part of a larger story of disintegration in relations between the United States and Germany that “is due in part to mutual enmity between the political leaders of the two countries. ” Merkel and Trump “are different characters and have not been able to establish any kind of relationship since Trump came to power in 2016.”
The Germans themselves noted that by moving American troops, the Trump administration appears to be working against some of its stated objectives.
“By withdrawing 12,000 soldiers from Germany, the United States achieved the exact opposite of what Esper described,” tweeted the head of the German Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Norbert Roettgen, who is a staunch ally of Merkel. “Instead of strengthening NATO, it is going to weaken the alliance,” said Roettgen. “The military influence of the United States will not increase, but will decrease relative to Russia and the Near and Middle East.”
In Bavaria, which houses several US bases, the state governor, a member of Merkel’s conservative bloc, said: “We very much regret the decision of the United States government.”
“Unfortunately, this seriously damages German-American relations,” said Markus Soeder. “You can’t see a military benefit. It weakens NATO and the United States.”
CNN’s Fred Pleitgen in Berlin contributed to this report.
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