The US President has already threatened to take US troops out of Germany as he feuds with Chancellor Friedrich Merz – and asked whether he’d do the same in Italy and Spain he said “probably, why shouldn’t I?”
Donald Trump threatened to pull troops out of more European countries in a fresh blow to NATO.
It comes after he made a similar threat to withdraw from Germany.
On his Truth Social website on Wednesday, Trump wrote that the US was reviewing possible troop reductions in Germany, with a “determination” to be made soon.
And today he lashed out at Chancellor Friedrich Merz, telling Germany’s leader he should “spend more time on ending the war with Russia / Ukraine ” and “fixing his broken Country” than concerning himself with Iran.
Merz said in comments this week that the US was being “humiliated” by Tehran in negotiations to end the Iran war.
And today, Trump was asked if he was also thinking about pulling troops out of Italy and Spain, in retaliation for their reluctance to get involved with the Iran war.
“Yeah, probably,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I? Italy has not been of any help to us, and Spain has been horrible.”
American allies in NATO have braced for a US troop withdrawal since just after the Trump administration took office, with Washington warning Europe would have to look after its own security, and that of Ukraine, in the future.
Depending on operations, exercises and troop rotations, around 80,000-100,000 US personnel are usually stationed in Europe. NATO allies have expected for more than a year that US troops deployed after Russia launched its all-out war on Ukraine in February 2022 would be first to leave.
Germany hosts several US military facilities, including the headquarters of its European and Africa commands, Ramstein Air Base and a medical center in Landstuhl, where casualties from wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq were treated. US nuclear missiles are also stationed in the country.
Ed Arnold, an expert in European security at the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, in London, said that the US gets a lot out of its presence in Germany — like logistics and support for Middle East combat operations — and was unlikely to withdraw.
Nico Lange from the Center of European Policy Analysis agreed, and said that there are approximately 36,000 US soldiers in Germany who primarily serve US interests, including “the projection of American power globally,” rather than helping with the defense of Germany.
The US has invested “substantial funds” in high-quality infrastructure in Germany that can’t be moved overnight, and a different deployment would cost Washington a huge amount of money, which would require Trump to get approval from US Congress, Lange said.
As early as 2020, Trump announced plans to withdraw 11,900 US troops from Germany, but that didn’t happen partly because US Congress didn’t provide the necessary funds and a withdrawal would have required enormous investments elsewhere.