Why Trump is pulling U.S. forces from Germany
Merkel spoiled Trump's plans to play statesman for a campaign photo op
The Pentagon announced plans today to withdraw almost 12,000 U.S. forces from Germany, bringing U.S. troop levels there to 24,000 from 36,000 currently, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said. The announced plan would bring 6,400 U.S. troops and their families back to the United States, and move another 5,600 U.S. forces currently based in Germany to elsewhere in Europe, including to Belgium and Italy. The moves would cost billions of dollars in military construction costs, and take years, Pentagon officials said.
Pres. Trump, speaking at the White House this morning, made clear that he considers the U.S. troop pullout being undertaken at his demand an action to punish Germany.
“Germany’s delinquent,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House this morning to travel to a fundraiser in Texas. “They haven’t been been paying their fees...Germany owes billions and billions of dollars to NATO, and why would we keep all of those troops there.”
But the ostensible rationale for the punishment that Trump cited is both factually incorrect, and a cover story, for the real reason: Namely, that Trump does not consider that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is sufficiently deferential and obsequious to him.
Or, as I put it a bit more directly in June, because Merkel doesn’t kiss Trump’s ass.
Fox News’ Pentagon reporter Jennifer Griffin reported on June 29 that sources told her that Trump’s former Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell proposed pulling U.S. forces from Germany to punish Merkel for rebuffing Trump’s proposal to host an in-person Group of 7 meeting in Washington in late June, citing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. But Merkel and some other European allies reportedly also feared the meeting would be little more than a Trump campaign photo-op, and a mask-less one at that.
“While officials said Merkel's reluctance to attend the G7 summit was primarily based on the ongoing health situation, they also said European G7 leaders are concerned that Trump may simply want to use their visit for an election-year photo op, and as a basis for declaring the world is getting back to work — thanks to him,” Politico reported on May 29. “Officials said that there had been very little of the traditional preparation that precedes the annual G7 summit, including detailed discussion about the agenda, and often intensive negotiation over the drafting of formal conclusions.”
And Trump’s cover rationale for yanking troops from Germany is further shown to be bogus, given the fact that two of the European countries the Pentagon said U.S. forces based in Germany would be moved to—Belgium and Italy—both pay a smaller share of their GDP on defense spending than does Germany.
“In fact Belgium and Italy, the two countries that will be receiving US troops from Germany, spend an even a smaller percentage on defense than Berlin does,” CNN reports. “Italy spends about 1.22% of its GDP on defense spending while Belgium spends about 0.93% of its GDP on defense, ranking near the bottom among NATO members.”
“This is all to do with Donald Trump’s deep-seated psychological hostility to Germany in general and Angela Merkel in particular,” Thomas Wright, director of the Center for the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, put it to the Financial Times. “There’s no strategy.”
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Also to read today on the near-collapse of U.S. foreign policy in the Trump era:
“The State Department under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is paralyzed, demoralized and at a new low, according to a new report by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee published Tuesday, which describes a lack of accountability, wildly unfit administration nominees, politically driven targeting of career staff, and a growing sense that senior leadership does not maintain high standards of honesty and integrity,” CNN’s Nicole Gaouette reports.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats’ report: “Democracy in Crisis,” The Trump Administration’s Decimation of the State Department.
Trump tells Axios’ Jonathan Swan that he has never discussed the issue of alleged Russian bounties paid to Taliban proxies to attack U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan in his phone calls with Russia’s Vladimir Putin—of which he has had seven since March. “We had a call talking about nuclear proliferation, which is a very big subject where they would like to do something and so would I,” Trump said of his latest phone call with Putin, on July 23. “We did not discuss that . . . I have never discussed that with him, no.”