Donald Trump seems to finally be making good on his threat. The US president apparently wants to punish Germany for, in his view, not spending enough on its own defense. But this decision by a temperamental president is misguided for several reasons.
Removing 9,500 troops from Germany does not make military sense. It does not follow any recognizable strategy; the US personnel there essentially work within the framework of NATO for the Pentagon’s European and Africa Commands. They operate the Ramstein airbase, a military hospital and a military training facility. They are important pillars of NATO infrastructure, but they do not, strictly speaking, contribute much to Germany’s national defense.
Trump’s erratic decision to send some of those troops to Poland and the rest to the US weakens his own military, as well as NATO. It is a purely political decision made to put pressure on Washington’s ally Germany. […]
The joy emanating from Poland, meanwhile, is premature. Warsaw views the relocation of US troops to Polish soil as a reward for its national-conservative government’s allegiance to Trump. But the move comes at the chagrin of NATO’s European members and, as already stated, has little military relevance — the troops in question will consist of military staff, if anything, not combat units. Permanently transferring troops further east to Poland will also likely violate the NATO-Russia Founding Act, thus further provoking the Kremlin. Läs artikel