U.S. Pivots Further From Trump With More Troops for Germany
(Bloomberg) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that 500 additional troops will be stationed in Germany from the fall, marking a reversal of former President Donald Trump’s planned drawdown.
President Joe Biden said in February he was freezing Trump’s plan to withdraw about 9,500 soldiers from Germany -- a move that had stunned European and North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies and generated bipartisan protest in the U.S. Congress.
After talks with German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in Berlin on Tuesday, Austin told reporters that the extra troops -- who will be based in the Wiesbaden area near Frankfurt -- will provide “additional capabilities in space and cyber, and some other issues.”
The Biden administration has sought to distance itself from Trump’s “America first” foreign policy which urged U.S. allies to fend for themselves and pay more toward collective defense. It has repeatedly stated that the support of allies is central to accomplishing its foreign policy goals from competing with China to containing climate change, and managing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
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