Growing US-Germany tensions have reached the point where the Trump Administration has announced that 9,500 troops will be returning from Germany. This will leave 25,000 US troops there, which is the new “cap” for maximum troop levels.
The US has been haranguing Germany for years over military spending, and this has included Trump threatening to pull troops back. Polls have shown Germany tended to prefer that the US troops leave anyhow.
The US had at one point many more troops in Germany, as part of Cold War deals. The troops are still nominally there to fight Russia, even though a large number of NATO countries are now in between Germany and Russia.
Trump was keen to get Germany to pay more to NATO, and more to the US, as a condition for keeping the troops, and this current cut is likely a prelude to asking for more money. Germany, however, has not been desperate to placate Trump, and may just shrug this off.
GOOD RIDDENCE
I guarantee you they will all be returning once Biden is elected. And at this point he is a done deal post George Floyd protests.
I suspect everybody is happier, not the least of whom is Vladimir Putin
How would this be of any interest to Putin? If some nukes were removed then that would be a cause for celebration.
I think Trump was angry as the large delegation from German Chamber of Commerce landed in China. There are over 5,200 German companies there employing over 1 million people including Germans. Germany is a manufacturing country and was hurt by epidemics.
They are not going to let trade suffer, and Trump is punishing Germany. These troops contribute to their economy. Goid, we need them to spend money at home!
You do realise that this is not seen as a punishment by anyone here in Germany, rather a positive signal. The contribution of foreign troops to the economy is not as large as you imagine it to be.
Germany must cooperate with countries where there is something to gain. Watch both sides for face saving. US cooperation now only costs.
The money plowed into the German Marshall Fund (GMF) must be earned by someone.
Spiegel has a little video ‘what to do with all those for whom there is no livelihood?’ They mean the homeless whose problems have exacerbated by the virus crisis. Please note that they acknowledge there are not enough livelihoods. On a European level they must address the situation, it says. If they can keep the borders closed for a fair while they might have a chance to get many off the streets.
I wonder if these troops will just end up being sent to Poland or the Baltics, which would satisfy Polish/Baltic paranoia and continuing MIC profits.
I read somewhere that some will go home, some will go to Poland, and some will go elsewhere – not specified. I guess that would be Indo-Pacific where Obama wanted to ‘contain China’, but we don’t know yet.
Stuff happens when you are $25 Trillion in Debt and running a $3 Trillion deficit.
Actual deficit is closer to $4 T. https://usdebtclock.org/ We’ll probably finish the year over 5.
Germany ought to throw the invaders out… All of them.
The world should be thowing all the german immigrants of theirs out as well. Send em all back and have em leech off germany’s broken welfare system that’s on the verge of life support.
Well past time Europe chart it’s own course, without the US.
Germany and France would be happy to do that .
Once Brexit is truly done and dusted, it will be easier.
Bring all the troops home now. Make Mattis, Kelly and Powell really angry.
You may find that the internationally operating corporations might want to keep that protection, for which they should pay, not the taxpayer. In the African country of Mali (which falls under Stuttgart’s Africom) the troops are there for the uranium mining (or something to do with nuclear). The taxpayer has always been willing to provide the guards but it got out of hand.
Then why are Germen politicians speaking out against it? Not counting some far right and far left types.
Trump is following his plan of weakening the NWO . It seems only the little Nazi Baltic countries are gleefully paying to support the North American Terrorist Organization known as NATO MAGA
The sad thing about you NWOers is you fear the rest of the world when it’s the US that is the world bully, and it’s the US establishment and government which you should be most afraid of yourselves, as video after video demonstrates that your badgeless anonymous thugs with batons and battle armour ought to show you. The rest of the world isn’t arming and training their civilian federal employees in military tactics (see an article on this site a few days ago). You know who coined the phrase ‘new world order’, right? Ex-CIA head, VP and Pres. G. Bush sr., as he saw himself inaugurating a unipolar world with the US at its heart. In other words, YOU (Americans and their various agencies) are the NWO you fear.
Trump has made some statements from time to time about meddling less in the world’s affairs particularly the ME. So did Bush Jr. when he ran. He has since taken every opportunity to insult, berate, and generally iritate or bully the rest of the world with a few notable exceptions, much of it for no discernible purpose related to policy goals explicit or implicit; his temper tantrums are now so taken for granted that everyone around him walks on eggshells for fear of being fired for telling him the truth about anything. He has had four years to “stop the wars”. Oh, at least he hasn’t started any. Really? You are no longer welcome in Iraq, you are occupying Iraq again, after you assassinated an Iranian general on their soil. Those are acts of war. He vetoed the Houses; attempts to remind him of his constraints. He sells arms to the Saudis against the wishes of the Houses. At one point he mused about dismissing both houses at the height of the pandemic. Dictator dreams much?
On that topic, he has made your experience with corona one of the three worst in the world by ignoring it at the start and it’s nowhere near over: the media have been distracted by the latest crisis, which he has also completely mishandled because, once more, he has chosen to approach the protests themselves as some kind of defiance of law and order, conflating them with riots and lootings that sometimes follow–even though the protests are taking place in every state. has only made things worse, and was running scared till he abused the army for his photo op at the church of the presidents. Given that move, I would not be suprised if one reason he is recalling troops is to redeploy them around DC.
Good for Germany. I wish Italy would do the same.
Oh, some Germans will suffer the withdrawal – the beer sellers, pimps, some landlords, etc.
And you will be paying way more a year on your military budget if it does happen. Good luck with that.
Dear Ameer, three strikes and your out! Listen to me. I don’t want my taxes to go to the MIC. If my corrupt politicians want to start up a war somewhere, they should enlist and go their themselves. Hey, maybe you can keep them company. Me a Trump apologist? Me a red neck? Not me baby. I’m for peace and dialogue. Your the one who sounds like the Red neck.
Haha… what good news for us!
Not really if it means your people will be paying more in military spending.
All that expense and war preparation is to contain Russia, which has about 144 million people while America has more than double like about 330 million.
The EU has 440 million (down 60 after Brexit). What a huge preparation and cost factor, like about 800 million against 144 million Russians!
They must be soooo clever the Russians if they are such a threat. Then again, it could be that all the war preparations are directed against China, but they are 4 times the population of what the US is.
Whichever way you shake it, it’s lopsided. As a former German I believe that they are not afraid of Russians, they know them well on all kinds of levels. They got rid of them once, and can do it again. Ramstein did not kick them out, needle pricks did. They also stayed in their barracks in East Germany for more than 3 years because there was no housing for millions of returning Red Army soldiers in the territories of the former Soviet Union. I saw them when visiting Erfurt in 1993.
(This was not accepted by an MSM string)
Hosting U.S. soldiers was good money for Germany; that commerce will be missed.
https://www.dw.com/en/us-troop-pullout-to-hit-local-german-economies/a-1299315
Other than that, good news all round.
Maybe, exit US military spending boondoggle, might fix our economy. Thereby allowing vacations for american workers to germany. For the price of a soldier you could send many tourists, and they won’t be carrying guns.
The problem with the ‘free’ market for monopolists, is that its free.
There’s no guarantee Americans would vacation in Germany, let alone specific base locations, therefore there’s no local incentive to go for that.
Only 25,000 more to go. The 20,000 CIA agents should probably leave too.
Does Pompeo think Germany wants troops to stay? Probably the plan is to send the troops to Poland. Poland just wants to be protected from a new partition, such as in 1795, when they were wiped off the map for two hundred years.
When will the rest of the occupiers go?. Peace may break out at last.