Trump’s Plan To Pull U.S. Troops From Europe Is Good For Everyone, And America Most Of All
President Trump shocked the foreign-policy establishment with an announcement late Friday that the United States would be withdrawing roughly 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany.
Predictably, Washington’s Europe-Firsters snapped for their fainting couches. Sen. Roger Wicker and Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairs of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, respectively, pronounced themselves “very concerned” by the move, fretting that it “risks undermining deterrence and sending the wrong signal to Vladimir Putin.”
President Trump is right to withdraw troops from Germany and from Europe. Neocon Republicans and Democrats are wrong. There is already a template for a rapid withdrawal from Europe: the one that took place after the end of the Cold War — incidentally, also the last era when the U.S. had a balanced budget. Our only criticism is that Trump’s current withdrawal numbers don’t go far enough. (In fairness, the president promised on Saturday that he is “going to cut way down. And we’re cutting a lot further than 5,000.”)
There is one argument for maintaining U.S. dominance of European security that could hold water: the idea that doing so prevents World War III. As the German scholar Josef Joffe posed it, the U.S. presence serves as a “pacifier” for Europe, which without it would otherwise drift back to security competition or war.
This view is dated and fails to recognize how profoundly Europe has changed. The United Kingdom and France have nuclear weapons, which they would use to defend themselves if needed. The Bundeswehr does not have anywhere near the size to expand into its wealthy neighbors. And a Russia that cannot defeat Ukraine cannot expand into Europe.
Beyond the realist argument above, there are two other arguments for trying to sustain U.S. military dominance in Europe. The first is for continuous forward presence and primacy to deter any plausible threat to any NATO member-state. The second is for “civilizational” allies, and advocates moving troops into the “healthier” countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Both are flawed, and President Trump should reject them.
As the National Security Strategy 2025 correctly states, “Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. … The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” The NSS accordingly calls for enabling and encouraging Europe to stand on its own feet, ending the perception and practice of a growing NATO, and ensuring fair trade from European partners. None of that necessitates a constant American forward presence.
There is also an argument to move troops out of Germany and closer to the Russian border, to be placed in “civilizational” allies and countries. That would also be counterproductive. To incentivize Germany and other rich Western European states to take more of the burden of European defense, Trump should pull American troops out of the continent. Moving them further toward their main threat will do little to create a sense of urgency.
The core interests of the United States in Europe are limited. Washington’s chief strategic aim for more than 100 years has been to ensure a disunited Europe. The United States did not want a single power bloc led by Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union to dominate Europe politically and economically. As Hans Morgenthau explained in 1950: “We have conceived the two wars which we fought essentially as two holy crusades, engaged in by a good people against an evil one. It so happened, that what was really at stake in those crusades was not at all the extirpation of evil of its own sake, but the restoration of the balance of power in Europe.” There is no hegemonic threat to Europe on the horizon today. The European Union is an economic rival, at most.
What this means is that keeping European power divided entails keeping the major European states, such as Russia, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, divided. A U.S. absence will incentivize a natural equilibrium and regional blocs coalescing within Europe. Stronger sovereigntist and centrifugal forces within Europe will also likely emerge.
Under the current policy, the United States acts as an unnatural glue that keeps the European Union protected beneath massive American defense subsidies. As history shows, the threat of even partial U.S. withdrawal either pushes European states to rearm rapidly, as in the cases of Germany and Poland at present, or produces local balancing coalitions, such as the German brigade in Lithuania or the Greco-French military alliance. As a Politico Europe headline blared in December, “Trump’s attacks force Europe to speed up post-America defense plans.” Wonderful. Trump should keep going.
Critics of withdrawing U.S. troops from Germany further argue that the U.S. presence there makes U.S. intervention in the Middle East easier, so Americans should want to keep it. For example, the statement of the Senate and House Armed Services Committee chairmen protests that U.S. bases in Germany provide “seamless access, basing, and overflight for U.S. forces” conducting the current U.S. war in Iran. But the United States should not be lubricating power projection into the Middle East. If starting U.S. wars in the Middle East became a bit harder as a result of having fewer troops in Germany, this should be viewed as a feature, not a bug.
German and broader European security do not require American power theater. According to Europeans, the main threat they face is from Moscow. But a Russia that cannot defeat Ukraine cannot threaten Germany, much less conquer and pacify a continent with four times its population. Russian GDP is only three times Poland’s, or slightly less than Italy and Portugal’s combined. Russia is not a plausible European hegemon and will not be one in the policy-relevant future. Accordingly, keeping Germany free from Russian aggression does not require U.S. troops inside its borders. Encouraging Germany to rapidly rearm and balance Russia, as President Trump is currently doing, is the right approach.
Trump has worried about allied burden-shifting for decades. In a 1987 ad in The New York Times, he admonished American politicians to “stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves.” His instinct was right then, and he is still right. Removing U.S. forces from Germany is a move that truly puts America first. The president should ignore his critics and follow through on his promise.
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