(Bloomberg) -- The US has ordered the drawdown of roughly 5,000 troops from Germany over the next year, following through on President Donald Trump’s threats to reduce American military presence in the country as tensions escalate over the war with Iran.
A NATO spokesperson said the defense alliance is looking for details on the US effort, adding that Washington’s move underscores the need for Europe to continue to invest more in its own defence.
The alliance remains confident of its ability to provide for deterrence and defense as a shift toward a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO continues, the spokesperson said.
The spat over troop levels in Germany also comes as Trump announced he was raising tariffs on cars and trucks from the European Union to 25%, a move that will have a disproportionate impact on German automakers.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement on Friday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered the withdrawal.
“This 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,” Parnell said. “We expect the withdrawal to be completed over the next six to twelve months.”
The Pentagon didn’t respond to specific questions about whether the personnel would be repositioned elsewhere in Europe and if the reduction affected rotational or permanently stationed forces.
The US plans were first reported earlier Friday by CBS News, which cited senior defense officials it did not name. Those officials cast the move as a demonstration of the president’s frustration with European allies who have balked at his calls to do more to assist the US and Israel in their war on Iran, the report said.
Trump on Wednesday had said he was reviewing troop levels in Germany with an eye toward reducing those numbers. That announcement came just days after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz questioned Trump’s handling of the Iran war in unusually blunt terms, saying the administration was being “humiliated.”
Some 35,000 troops — almost half the total of US forces in Europe — are currently stationed in Germany, where the American command for the region is headquartered. The US has relied heavily on its extensive network of bases and other facilities in Germany, a legacy of the Cold War, to prepare and launch operations against Iran.
Trump’s order is likely to face opposition in Congress. His previous attempt to remove forces from Germany in 2020 was blocked by legislative opposition.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that the president “should immediately reverse this foolish decision. Withdrawing thousands of American troops from one of our most important strategic positions in the middle of a war is a serious mistake that will reverberate well beyond this moment.”
The move is Trump’s latest challenge to the NATO alliance, whose other members he’s long accused of not doing enough to pay for their own defense. More recently, he threatened to take Greenland from alliance partner Denmark and blasted allies for not doing more to help in the Iran campaign.
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Trump has clashed with Merz over the wars in Iran and Ukraine and the future of NATO. At the same time, Merz has led a huge increase in German defense spending, drawing praise from US officials. Still, Merz’s recent comments that the US lacked a strategy for the war drew Trump’s ire, triggering the threat to remove US troops.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul had played down Trump’s earlier warning, saying Thursday that his government would take a “calm” look at the possibility of reducing American forces. “The US needs these bases,” he said, citing key facilities including Ramstein, Landstuhl and Grafenwohr.
Germany provides land for the bases rent-free, as well as staff to support the American forces.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius on Saturday said Europe must assume greater responsibility for security in the region, while emphasizing the continued importance of shared military interests with the US.
The US order was “predictable,” Pistorius told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, adding that “the presence of American troops in Europe, and particularly in Germany, lies in our interest and in the interest of the US.”
--With assistance from Jennifer A. Dlouhy and John Harney.
(Updates with NATO response from second paragraph.)
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