Trump Orders Withdrawal of 5,000 Troops from Germany

U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the withdrawal of approximately 5,000 troops from Germany amid ongoing tensions with NATO allies over Iran policy and criticism from German leaders. The Pentagon confirmed the troop reduction on Friday, characterizing it as a signal of Trump's discontent with European allies' perceived lack of support in the U.S.-Iran war.

The current active-duty troop presence in Germany stands at around 36,400 as of December 2025. The withdrawal is expected to be completed over the next six to twelve months, bringing U.S. troop levels in Europe back to roughly pre-2022 levels before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered a buildup by then-President Joe Biden.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius sought to project calm after the Pentagon's announcement, calling the decision 'anticipated' and insisting his country is ready to shoulder more of the burden of its defense. 'The presence of American troops in Europe, and particularly in Germany, lies in our interest and in the interest of the US,' Pistorius told German news agency dpa.

The Pentagon stated that recent German rhetoric had been 'inappropriate and unhelpful,' adding that 'the president is rightly reacting to these counterproductive remarks.' Trump has also suggested pulling U.S. troops from Italy and Spain due to their criticism of the Iran war, according to BBC News. In social media posts on Thursday, Trump said Chancellor Friedrich Merz was 'doing a terrible job' and had 'problems of all kinds,' including on immigration and energy.

NATO spokesperson Allison Hart underscored the need for Europe to invest more in defense and take on a greater share of the responsibility for shared security. Germany is already undergoing an historic expansion of its own defense forces, aiming to spend more than three percent of GDP on defense by next year—well above NATO's two percent benchmark.

News of the troop withdrawal drew swift condemnation from Democrats in Congress and members of a hawkish Washington think tank. They said the move would benefit Russian President Vladimir Putin and weaken U.S. security interests. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated that the withdrawal 'suggests American commitments to our allies are dependent on the president’s mood.' Bradley Bowman, a scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted that the U.S. military’s presence in Germany and elsewhere in Europe 'not only strengthens deterrence against additional Kremlin aggression but also facilitates the projection of American military power into the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa.'

As part of Trump’s withdrawal decision, a brigade combat team now in Germany will be pulled out of the country, and a long-range fires battalion that the Biden administration had planned to begin deploying to Germany later this year will no longer deploy. This move is seen as another potent reminder of Trump’s willingness to respond to perceived disloyalty by allies.

Global perceptions of the U.S. have deteriorated for a second consecutive year and are now worse than views of Russia, an annual study on democracy published on Friday showed, as U.S. President Donald Trump's policies continue ‌to severely strain the NATO alliance (Reuters). The Denmark-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation, which commissioned the survey, said the U.S. was also most frequently named in response to which country posed the greatest threat to ​the world, after Russia and Israel.

Germany's finance minister has blamed Donald Trump's 'irresponsible war in Iran' for a big drop in his country's expected tax revenues (BBC). Lars Klingbeil said the US president's actions in the region had caused a 'global energy shock'. German officials have slashed the projected tax revenue for 2026-2030 by around €70bn ($82bn; £60.52bn). The downgrade 'shows just how much the war in Iran is harming our economy', Klingbeil said in Berlin.

As President Trump seeks to wind down the war in Iran, the United States is facing not only economic fallout such as higher gas prices but also mounting geopolitical costs (NPR). Fresh disputes between Washington and NATO over the Middle East conflict are pushing European leaders to seriously consider a future in which the U.S. no longer leads the alliance.

Trump’s decision to leave NATO in the dark before launching strikes on Iran — as well as his subsequent call for the alliance to assist in reopening the Strait of Hormuz — has inflamed tensions that had been simmering for months over the president's threats to seize control of NATO-linked Greenland and Canada, along with repeated suggestions that the United States might withdraw from the alliance entirely.

NATO leaders are aware that acquiring these capabilities is a vital but time-consuming task. Balkan Devlen, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an independent think tank based in Ottawa, estimates that it will take between five and 10 years to develop these capabilities, leaving a 'vulnerability gap' that Russia could exploit in the meantime.

In response to Trump's actions, former Thatcher advisor Nile Gardiner told Fox News Digital, 'The lack of support for the United States has been nothing less than treacherous. I think the president has the right to be outraged by the lack of support from key European allies.' He noted that there is a deep-seated cultural appeasement in Europe toward the Iranian regime and a refusal to accept the reality of the immense dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran.