President Trump plans for some of the 10,000 troops to be withdrawn from Germany to return to the United States, while Polish President Andrzej Duda said at the White House that he welcomes more U.S. troops in his country.
“We’re going to be reducing our forces in Germany. Some will be coming home, and some will be going to other places,” Trump said Wednesday at a Rose Garden press conference alongside Duda, the first foreign head of state to visit the U.S. after the coronavirus lockdown.
Trump railed on Germany again for not meeting a 2% defense goal set by NATO, calling the country “delinquent.” Trump also acknowledged that while the troop withdrawal sends a message to Russia, Germany’s energy purchases give off a stronger message.
“You’re sending billions of dollars to Russia, then we’re supposed to defend you from Russia?” Trump said rhetorically, referring to what he viewed as an imbalanced relationship.
Meanwhile, Duda said he worried about the withdrawal of any U.S. troops from Europe, citing a call with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
“That would be very detrimental to European security,” he said. “It is deeply justified to ensure that the U.S. troops are left in Europe.”
The U.S. maintains some 35,000 troops in Germany, which also acts as the headquarters for U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command and a transit point for troops deploying to war zones.
Duda, on his third White House visit and facing an election in Poland Sunday, said he asked Trump not to withdraw forces from Europe and said he would welcome more U.S. troops.
“The American presence since the end of the Second World War is a huge security guarantee,” he said. “If I am asked by anybody [if] Poland [would] receive more U.S. troops in our country, of course, I am ready.”
Duda underscored that American troops on NATO’s Eastern Flank strengthened Polish national security in the face of Russian aggression.
Trump took the opportunity of a mention of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014 to highlight that the incident took place during the Obama administration and would not happen on his watch.
“It hasn’t happened with us, and it won’t happen with us,” Trump said.
‘Security is not a commodity’
Trump and Duda signed an agreement last year to base 1,000 U.S. troops in Poland at Poland’s expense, but Polish and Baltic security experts have told the Washington Examiner that no country in the region can host significant numbers of the 10,000 U.S. soldiers that Trump wants to remove from Germany.
Removing all those troops would be a threat to national security, say many Republican members of Congress, including several GOP members of the House Armed Services Committee.
Meanwhile, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer also stressed Wednesday the U.S. national security value of having troops in Germany.
“They send a very, very strong signal from Europe to Russia,” she said on an Atlantic Council virtual discussion earlier in the day. “It is important that NATO and the NATO partners stand united, visibly united, and it is important that we stick to this treaty that we’ve agreed to.”
Kramp-Karrenbauer made the case that Germany served as a vital forward operating base for U.S. deployments in the hemisphere.
“Ramstein is the hub of deployment of troops, further deployment to operations,” she said while also highlighting the importance of the Landstuhl military hospital and military exercises conducted in Germany.
Trump’s proposal to limit troops in Germany to 25,000 would prevent the U.S. from transiting troops involved in large-scale exercises.
“If troops are redeployed to the U.S., then you have to make sure that you don’t send the wrong signal that the U.S. is less interested in Europe,” she added, noting that Germany stood with the U.S. when Article 5 was invoked after Sept. 11, 2001, and fought in Afghanistan.
“Security is not a commodity,” she added. “It is important that the Pentagon and the American side is reliable.”
