Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Sponsored by
Educate and enlighten the whole family with CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream has thousands of streamable documentaries and non-fiction TV shows on topics like History, Nature, Science, Food, Technology, Travel, and more. Use code FLIPSIDE to sign up for just $14.99 for the whole YEAR. Sign Up Today.
“The U.S. military on Wednesday unveiled plans to withdraw about 12,000 troops from Germany… [Defense Secretary Mark] Esper said some U.S. troops would reposition to the Black Sea region and some could temporarily deploy in waves to the Baltics. Other forces leaving Germany would permanently move to Italy and the U.S. military’s European headquarters would relocate from Stuttgart, Germany, to Belgium…
“In total, just under 6,000 troops of the 12,000 leaving Germany are expected to remain in Europe. Many of the other forces will be based in the United States but will rotate into Europe for temporary deployments without their families.” Reuters
Read our prior coverage of the troop withdrawal here. The Flip Side
The right is divided over whether the withdrawal will strengthen or weaken US security.
Those who support the decision observe that “Americans are supposed to defend Germany from Russian aggression in perpetuity. Yet Germany has no compunction about tying its energy security to Moscow via the Nordstream 2 pipeline. The NATO alliance is of paramount importance, we are told, but not such that Germany will ever meet its 2 percent of GDP defense-spending obligation. As the president astutely put it: ‘Germany pays Russia billions of dollars a year for energy, and we are supposed to protect Germany from Russia. What’s that all about?’”
Allan Richarz, New York Post
“Why should the United States prop up the defense of Germany, the richest country in Europe — and against Russia, Germany’s closest energy partner?… The US should accept victory in Germany just as it should accept defeat in Afghanistan. Through American blood and subsidy, the Germans have been restored to independence in a liberal democracy. They are political adults… The ex-Soviet states of the EU’s eastern front — the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in particular — are also free political adults once more…
“The tripwire between the West and the Rest no longer runs through the middle of Berlin: it is on Estonia’s border with Russia, Bulgaria’s frontier with Turkey, and at sites of Chinese economic penetration in the Balkans such as the port of Piraeus in Greece. It is in the EU’s east and southeast that the US forces will be symbolically and strategically valuable: repositioning forces to Italy and Poland confirms the political borders of the EU.”
Dominic Green, Spectator USA
“Those who oppose this decision are mainly motivated by a reflex to maintain the status quo in Europe. But there is no good reason why Washington needs tens of thousands of American troops positioned on the continent at a time when the geopolitical game has moved away from Europe and towards Asia, where another near-peer competitor (China) is capitalizing on the last two decades of exponential growth to press its own interests…
“The United States can’t afford to be everywhere and do everything for everybody, all of the time. U.S. officials may have been able to get away with a lack of prioritization in the early 1990s, but Washington is fooling itself if it believes it can continue to exhaust itself into strategic insolvency. Difficult choices will need to be made; a clear sense of priorities will need to be followed, and nations normally dependent on the U.S. for security will have to make the transformation into becoming capable and responsible security allies in their own right.”
Daniel DePetris, Washington Examiner
Critics argue that “The Pentagon is presenting the move as improving its flexibility. Yet the U.S. presence in Germany—along with infrastructure and knowledge built over decades—is strategically located in the geopolitical and economic heart of Europe. Moving forces south or west in the Continent is a retreat that reduces U.S. ability to surge into the theater if Russia makes a military move…
“The Obama Administration in 2012 and 2013 withdrew U.S. combat brigades from Germany, and Vladimir Putin responded by invading Ukraine in 2014. Expect the Kremlin to get similar signals from President Trump’s move. Mr. Esper said some forces will move to Poland, but there is no agreement yet to do so.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“It would be more effective and strategic to add to the rotational base and to deploy more forces for a forward presence. Simply moving troops around Europe creates more problems than it solves for the United States…
“Moving the military outside of Germany is anything but a free lunch. There are significant costs attached with closing bases, relocating service members and their families, creating new facilities in places like Italy and Belgium, and sustaining a regular rotational presence within Europe from across the Atlantic Ocean… the money spent to make these moves is money that would not be available for other critical public needs.”
James Carafano and Daniel Kochis, The Hill
The left is critical of the withdrawal, arguing that it will harm US security.
The left is critical of the withdrawal, arguing that it will harm US security.
“Since early in his administration, President Trump has advanced the profoundly wrongheaded notion that close U.S. allies such as Germany, Japan and South Korea are not ‘paying’ enough for the U.S. troops, which in Mr. Trump’s blinkered view are there only to defend foreign nations, not to advance U.S. security… [Trump is] delivering a huge gift to Russian ruler Vladimir Putin, who wishes for nothing more than the disintegration of the NATO alliance…
“Polls show public support for NATO and other alliances remains strong. Certainly that’s true in Congress, where there is bipartisan support for legislation making a reduction of U.S. troops in Germany or South Korea conditional on a Pentagon certification that it would not harm U.S. security. Unfortunately, the Trump administration previously has made a mockery of such requirements; stronger action may be required to protect these vital alliances.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“Trump gave a surreal interview to Axios reporter Jonathan Swan [last week] about his most recent phone call with Vladimir Putin. Swan asked Trump if he raised any questions about reports, which had been included in his President’s Daily Brief, that Russia had paid bounties to the Taliban for killing American soldiers. Trump said he hadn’t. He insisted the intelligence ‘never reached my desk,’ which is false. Swan asked Trump about the fact that Russia supplies weapons to the Taliban, which has obviously been fighting American troops in Afghanistan. ‘Well, we supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia, too,’ he explained…
“The distinction between how Trump processes Germany’s self-interest and Russia’s self-interest is telling. If Germany has done something Trump deems contrary to American interests — sell us too many high-tech goods, or fail to maintain a large enough army — he treats it as an offense requiring punishment. If Russia has done something against American interests — arm a radical militia we’re fighting — he simply accepts it as natural. Self-interest is an excuse for Russia, but not for Germany.”
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
“One irony is that the withdrawal will put a greater burden on the U.S. defense budget. Money would be saved if Trump disbanded the military units that he was withdrawing, but that’s not what he’s doing. According to Esper, 6,400 of the troops… are simply being ‘repositioned’ to other parts of Europe, mainly Italy, Belgium, and possibly, at some point in the unspecified future, Poland. It will cost a fair bit of change to build or expand new structures and facilities in these countries. (Another telling irony: Italy and Belgium don’t pay as much for defense as Trump wants them to pay either. This is simply revenge against Merkel.)…
“It doesn’t much matter whether the U.S. has 36,000 or 24,000 troops in Germany or some other place in Europe. In case of war, they would have to be reinforced with more troops from elsewhere either way. But the permanent stationing of troops is a token—in this case, a heavily armed token—of a commitment to defend. Withdrawing a large fraction of those troops can’t help but be seen, by friends and foes alike, as a slackening of that commitment.”
Fred Kaplan, Slate
“[John M.] Koenig, the former embassy chief [in Berlin], remembers the rock-star reception 100,000 Berliners gave to Obama before his 2008 election. ‘Something like that would never happen again,’ Koening, later U.S. ambassador to Cyprus under Obama, said. ‘There was a reservoir of positive sentiment that I think has just gone.’ Many in Berlin see this shift as part of a wider American decline, with Trump stepping back from several multilateralist projects…
“[If elected, Joe Biden would] be greeted by European leaders who are far more wary than they were during his days as Obama's point person on foreign policy… [Former US ambassador John C.] Kornblum, who has served Republican and Democratic presidents, describes Trump as ‘a very strange and disturbing personality’ who has ‘reduced our influence in the world.’”
Alexander Smith and Carlo Angerer, NBC News
