Authors: Sabine Siebold and Andreas Link
BERLIN, May 2 (Reuters) – German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Saturday that plans to withdraw 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany should spur Europe to beef up its own defenses, but two senior U.S. Republican lawmakers expressed concern and said U.S. troops should not leave Europe.
The Pentagon on Friday announced a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Germany, its largest European base, as the war with Iran and tariff tensions further strain U.S.-European relations.
“We’re going to have significant cuts, and they’re going to be well over 5,000 cuts,” President Donald Trump told reporters in Florida on Saturday when asked about the plan.
As part of the U.S. decision, a Biden-era plan to deploy a U.S. battalion of long-range Tomahawk missiles to Germany was also abandoned — a blow to Berlin, which had pushed for the move as a powerful deterrent to Russia.
Sen. Roger Wicker and Rep. Mike Rogers, both Republicans who chair the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, said they were “very concerned.” Troops should not be withdrawn from Europe, they said, but should be withdrawn eastward.
“Prematurely reducing the U.S. forward presence in Europe before these capabilities are fully realized could weaken deterrence and send the wrong signal to (Russian President) Vladimir Putin,” they said in a joint statement.
NATO and Washington cooperate on details
Pistorius said the partial withdrawal was expected and would affect the nearly 40,000 U.S. troops currently stationed in Germany.
“We Europeans must take more responsibility for our own security,” Pistorius said, adding that “Germany is on the right path” by expanding its armed forces and accelerating military procurement and infrastructure development.
As early as his first term, Trump called for reducing the military presence in Germany and repeatedly urged Europe to assume its defense responsibilities. However, he stepped up his threats earlier this week after a dispute with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who questioned Washington’s exit strategy in the Middle East.
The Pentagon said the withdrawal is expected to be completed within the next six to 12 months. It did not say which bases would be affected or whether troops would return to the United States or be redeployed in Europe or elsewhere.
A NATO spokesman said the alliance was working with the United States to understand the details of the decision.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk also expressed concern about recent setbacks for NATO. The country is seeking guarantees of continued U.S. support for NATO’s eastern flank as the Russia-Ukraine war continues.
“The greatest threat facing transatlantic society is not external enemies but the continued disintegration of our alliance. We must all do everything we can to reverse this catastrophic trend,” Tusk wrote on X on Saturday.
The Pentagon’s plan is the latest blow to Germany this weekend after Trump said he would raise tariffs on EU car imports to 25%, accusing the bloc of not supporting the trade deal, a move that could cost the German economy billions of dollars.
A foreign policy official from Chancellor Merz’s CDU party said the two statements should be viewed in the context of pressure on Trump at home and abroad, weak polls and pressure from unresolved conflicts in Ukraine, Venezuela and Iran.
“In this context, troop withdrawals and trade policy seem less like expressions of a coherent strategy and more like political reflexes and reactions out of frustration,” Peter Baier told Reuters.
Long range fire camp canceled
NATO members have pledged to take more responsibility for their own defense, but it will take years for the region to meet its security needs due to tight budgets and huge gaps in military capabilities.
Germany wants to increase the number of active Bundeswehr troops to 260,000 from the current 185,000, despite calls from the defense minister’s critics for more troops to counter what is widely seen as a growing threat from Russia.
The U.S. military presence in Germany began as an occupation force after World War II and reached its peak in the 1960s, when hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members were stationed there to fight the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
These presences include the massive Ramstein Air Base and Landstuhl Hospital, both of which are used by the United States to support its war in Iran and previous conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon’s decision means a full brigade will leave Germany and a long-range fires battalion scheduled to be deployed later this year will be cancelled.
Long-range firepower was originally intended to form an important additional deterrent factor against Russia, and the Europeans developed this long-range missile themselves.
Christian Moelling, director of the European defense think tank EDINA, wrote on X that the United States “has a de facto monopoly within NATO” on long-range firepower. “That’s why this is more of an operational problem than troop numbers.”
(Additional reporting by Ross Kerber, Rachel More, Andrew Gray, Marek Strzelecki and David Brunnstrom; Editing by James Mackenzie, Ross Colvin, William Maclean, Sharon Singleton and Alistair Bell)
