16 June – According to how reported by The Wall Street Journal U.S. President Donald Trump said that he wants to reduce the number of U.S. soldiers dislocated in Germany by 25000. The reason was Germany’s delinquency on defence spending.
This is a very unpopular plan among Republican lawmakers and experts of U.S. national security.
“We’re at 52,000 soldiers in Germany, that’s a tremendous number of soldiers, that’s a tremendous cost to the United States,” Trump said. “Germany, as you know, is very delinquent in their payments to NATO.”
“They are delinquent of billions of dollars, this is for years delinquent,” Trump said. “So we are putting the number down to 25,000 soldiers.”
A Public Domain Picture by U.S. Department of Defence Current Photos, U.S. Air Force 15E, Wikimedia.org
Around 35000 U.S. soldiers are posted in Germany and they are allowed at a maximum of 52000. Trump found that Germany was not committed 2% of their GDP to defence. In 2014, European countries set a goal to spend 2% of their GDP on defence by 2024 but Germany reduced it to 1.3% in 2019.
Although, 22 Republicans argued against the withdrawal of soldiers from Germany and asserted that this action would weaken the NATO alliance.
Accordingly to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Senate Armed Services chair, “reducing U.S. forces in Germany was such a bad idea even I do not believe Trump would order it”.
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