U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced that he was going forward on an earlier decision to move 11,900 troops out of bases in Germany, citing as justification Germany’s ongoing failure to pay its share of NATO costs, among other issues. “We don’t want to be the suckers anymore,” he declared. Trump’s decision is generating bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Congress, where it has been condemned as a gift to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The move has also caused consternation in Germany, whose ambassador to Washington tweeted that her country has been “proud to host US troops” and is the “3rd largest contributor to [NATO’s] budget.”
The widespread outrage over Trump’s troop-withdrawal decision notwithstanding, this move is not unprecedented in recent times. (In 2011, then-President Barack Obama pulled two combat brigades out of Germany for redeployment in Afghanistan.) Nor is it unprecedented that there should be rifts over the dimensions and costs of America’s military presence in Germany. What is new is the highly combative tone in which the initiative has been issued, along with an ancillary questioning of NATO’s necessity, America’s participation in that alliance, and the value of close U.S.-German ties.
