The Trump administration is mulling the potential withdrawal of up to 10,000 troops from Eastern Europe, NBC News reports Tuesday, citing half-a-dozen American and European officials privy to the discussions.
The internal discussions are specifically focused on reducing US troop levels in Romania and Poland, long dubbed NATO’s most important ‘eastern flank’ countries. If effected, the move would cut the Pentagon troop surge which began following the start of the Ukraine war by half, after some 20,000 soldiers were surged there to bolster Eastern Europe.
US troops have also been deployed to the Baltic states. Last month four US Army soldiers died during a training exercise. The members of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division were found in an area outside Pabradė, Lithuania.
“In the early morning hours of March 25, the four Soldiers went missing. The first three Soldiers and their M88A2 Hercules armored recovery vehicle were recovered from a peat bog in the early morning of March 31,” a US Army statement later confirmed.
Addressing the potential for a US draw-down in the region, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said this would be done in close coordination among European allies.
The Trump White House has been ramping up the pressure for European states to shoulder more of the burden for defense of the continent, including committing to higher defense spending.
NATO leadership has been in discussions for coming up with a plan to fill the gap of US leadership within the alliance five to ten years down the road, amid speculation Trump could pull the US out of NATO, or at least greatly reduce Washington commitments.
Financial Times wrote last month, “The discussions are an attempt to avoid the chaos of a unilateral US withdrawal from Nato, a fear sparked by President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to weaken or walk away from the transatlantic alliance that has protected Europe for almost eight decades.”
“The UK, France, Germany and the Nordics are among the countries engaged in the informal but structured discussions, according to four European officials involved,” the report said.
“Their aim is to come up with a plan to shift the financial and military burden to European capitals and present it to the US ahead of Nato’s annual leaders’ summit in The Hague in June,” FT continued.
But as we’ve detailed before, the ‘eastern flank’ countries prefer to remain under the US security umbrella. Poland is even still pitching a major US military base called “Fort Trump”. These eastern flank countries also tend to be hawkish when it comes to their anti-Moscow rhetoric.
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