Two top Republican lawmakers expressed their concern Saturday about President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw 5,000 U.S. troops from NATO ally Germany.
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“We are very concerned by the decision to withdraw a U.S. brigade from Germany,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss, and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., respectively the heads of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, said in a joint statement.
The president said Saturday that there could be more cuts to troops in Europe after the Pentagon announced the withdrawal. Trump told reporters: “We’re going to cut way down, and we’re cutting a lot further than 5,000.”
The decision to slash troops came after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told students earlier in the week that the U.S. was “being humiliated by the Iranian leadership,” unusually frank remarks that triggered a backlash from Washington. Almost 40,000 U.S. troops are currently stationed in Germany, the largest contingent in Europe.
Wicker and Rogers said it was in “America’s interest to maintain a strong deterrent in Europe,” warning about the signal it would send Russia to slash the American presence on the continent.
European leaders have already expressed a renewed desire to scale up their own independent defensive capabilities amid differences with the Trump administration on Ukraine, Iran, Greenland and NATO.
But Wicker and Rogers warned that even as spending is scaled up, “translating that investment into the military capability needed to assume primary responsibility for conventional deterrence will take time.”
They added: “Prematurely reducing America’s forward presence in Europe before those capabilities are fully realized risks undermining deterrence and sending the wrong signal to Vladimir Putin.”
At the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, allies made a commitment to investing 5% of gross domestic product annually on defense by 2035.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said in a statement Saturday the withdrawal of the troops was “foreseeable,” reiterating that “Europeans must assume more responsibility for our security.”
There was harsher language from some European leaders, with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk calling the rift between Europe and the U.S. a “disastrous trend,” saying in a post on X: “The greatest threat to the transatlantic community are not its external enemies, but the ongoing disintegration of our alliance.”
Tusk signaled Sunday that the issue is likely to be on the agenda as European leaders meet for a summit in Yerevan, Armenia.
He said the summit demonstrates that “transatlantic bonds and the European-American friendship are our common responsibility. And that there is no alternative to this. We need each other more than ever before.”
Democrats have also condemned the announcement. The House Armed Services Committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said the decision was “not grounded in any coherent U.S. national security policy” and would “embolden Russia.”
He also said the decision “runs counter to the intent of the law that Congress passed overwhelmingly last year,” referring to measures in the 2026 defense bill that restrict the Pentagon from unilaterally slashing troop levels in Europe below a threshold of 76,000 without approval.
NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said the alliance is working with the U.S. to “understand the details” of its drawdown decision.
For weeks, Trump has openly criticized NATO and European allies, including Germany, over what he sees as weak or absent support for the war with Iran. He has also suggested the U.S. could leave NATO, while members of his administration have also warned that the alliance cannot be a “one-way street.”
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement Friday that the withdrawal would be completed over the next six months to a year.
“This decision follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground,” he said.
