Trump has announced he wants to pull some 12,000 troops from Germany to relocate in Italy and Belgium. The reasons given seem vague and may include personal unhappiness with Germany among other things. It might be expensive. It might be interrupted by future presidents.
My question to military and knowledgeable Dopers - if the move went ahead, what are the geopolitical consequences, if any? This is not primarily a thread about Trump himself.
Seeing military experts chiming in on Twitter, apparently we’re still going to have 24,000 troops in Germany, and potentially some of the troops leaving Germany could be redeployed into Poland which wouldn’t really help Putin. Also a future President Biden could obviously stop this and put them back into Germany. There really wouldn’t be any major short-term geo-political consequences because it’s not like Russia is now going to strike into Germany at last. The “benefit” would be forcing Germany to contribute more into NATO spending which has always been a sore spot for past Presidents, the obvious downside is that we’d be wasting a ton of money shuffling troops around from already established bases.
Trump was saying tonight for the umpteenth time that “no one has been tougher on Russia” than he has.
Well, I’m convinced. Now Russian troops will have to travel much further if they want to engage the Americans.
In all seriousness, other US troops remain, and I have to think this is mainly related to the bee in Trump’s bonnet about who’s paying how much to finance NATO. I’m pretty sure there is no significant increased military threat by Russia to European countries from this action alone, but I’m guessing that Putin will happily welcome anything that promises to further destabilize the NATO alliance.
Moving troops from Germany to Poland would be more of a middle finger to Putin, not less. Poland is even closer to Russia, much more threatened by Russia than Germany, and more hostile to Russia.
But it’s a reminder to Germany that they can’t really rely on American support. If we can move troops out of Germany without a German agreement, it doesn’t matter if they’re being moved to Poland or Italy or back to America. And the same applies to every other NATO country in Europe.
This will come up the next time Russia is involved in a diplomatic dispute and Germany and other western European countries have to decide how far they’re willing to go in standing up to Russia.
It’s a reminder to Germany and European in general, that they are client states and have been since ‘45.
What Trump has done, as he has with so many things in his clumsy bull in a china shop fashion, is just brought distasteful facts front and centre.
Actual reasons:
He complains about this but I don’t really get it. AIUI, it’s not like there’s some unfulfilled NATO budget that the US is paying the difference on. The requirement is for X percent of GDP (or something) to be spent on military. So I’m not seeing how Germany spending or not spending another dollar affects our spending.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding how all this works.
Indirect – or national – contributions are the largest and come, for instance, when a member volunteers equipment or troops to a military operation and bears the costs of the decision to do so.
Direct contributions are made to finance requirements of the Alliance that serve the interests of all 30 members - and are not the responsibility of any single member - such as NATO-wide air defence or command and control systems. Costs are borne collectively, often using the principle of common funding.
Within the principle of common funding, all 30 members contribute according to an agreed cost-share formula, based on Gross National Income, which represents a small percentage of each member’s defence budget.
Common funding arrangements are used to finance NATO’s principal budgets: the civil budget (NATO HQ running costs), the military budget (costs of the integrated Command Structure) and the NATO Security Investment Programme (military capabilities).
Projects can also be jointly funded, which means that the participating countries can identify the requirements, the priorities and the funding arrangements, but NATO provides political and financial oversight. The funding process is overseen by the North Atlantic Council, managed by the Resource Policy and Planning Board, and implemented by the Budget Committee and the Investment Committee.
It looks like the direct budget is peanuts. And that he’s complaining about the 2% of GDP defense spending guideline.
If he wants to counteract that image, he best increase the troop level to 300,000 post haste! I bet that would let them know they’re not a client state!
Yes, I think that’s precisely what he’s complaining about. And to be fair, he does have a point - NATO members are supposed to spend 2% of GDP, but very few countries do (eastern bloc, UK, Greece). But his singling out of Germany does seem to be fired up by his loathing of Merkel.
So he thinks Italy is more apt to “pay their bills” than Germany is? That’s hilarious.
I’m just not sure of how strong a point it is. Germany could decide to pay for gold buttons for everyone’s dress uniforms. That would increase spending per GDP, but not enable us to spend less. If there’s some one to one relationship between how many tanks Germany maintains and how many tanks we keep there, then maybe there’s a point. That said, I’m assuming we have troops in Germany because we feel it benefits us. But I’m way out of my depth on this topic.
Even so, the damage is done, and what Trump is doing (and saying) is extremely dangerous. It would be one thing if Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine and engaged in regional policing in Ossetia, but they have. Despite the post WWII and Cold War thaw, Germany and Russia are historical rivals. Withdrawing that kind of force and then blaming an ally for not paying enough to keep them there creates uncertainty.
The only question for Putin is if his bounty on US troops is valid regardless of where they are deployed.
He has no point at all. The deployment in Germany has maintained stability for decades, acting as a deterrent against the territorial ambitions that Russia might have.
Well yes, that wasn’t my point. (I can’t believe I’m defending Trump here), I was just making the point that Germany are not meeting their spending commitments, which presumably might mean a US troop withdrawal could be filled by German troops. I have no opinion on this specific troop withdrawal - I don’t know enough (or anything) about military strategy.