12,000 US Troops will remain stay in Germany despite Trump’s Withdrawal Order

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The US General Tod Wolters (Nato’s supreme allied commander Europe) has announced the freezing of former President Trump’s order to pull out 12,000 US troops from Germany. On Wednesday, the US military has halted an order issued by Donald Trump to withdraw more than a quarter of its forces from Germany. The move was hugely controversial and viewed as an expression of spite towards a key western ally. Wolters said it would-be put-on hold to enable the new US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin to carry out a thorough review and report to President Joe Biden. Point to be noted that Trump had mentioned his decision as to punishment for Germany’s low spending on defense. It was widely seen to be an expression of his anger towards the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Angela Merkel had repeatedly challenged him on a number of issues. Gen Wolters was speaking at allied headquarters in Mons, Belgium. He said, “At this very moment, every single one of those options, they are all on hold. They will all be re-examined from cradle to grave. The US secretary of defense is at this moment in the process of conducting a very, very thorough review, and he will receive advice from both civilian and military leadership. Once he is allowed to collate all that advice to ultimately bring it to our president and the White House, he will deliver us a decision”. It was claimed that Trump’s decision was taken with next to no consultation with fellow Nato members. It was also said to be against the wishes of senior figures in the US State Department and the Pentagon.

It is noteworthy that the withdrawal announcement came in June 2020, a week after a fractious telephone call with Merkel. The German chancellor told the then US president that she would not be attending the G7 summit being hosted in the US because of the coronavirus pandemic. Donald Trump also wrongly claimed that Germany was not paying its Nato commitment. Trump said, “Our troops are there to protect Germany, right? And Germany is supposed to pay for it. Germany’s not paying for it. We don’t want to be the suckers anymore. The United States has been taken advantage of for 25 years, both on trade and on the military. So we’re reducing the force because they’re not paying their bills”. A senior Democrat, Robert Menendez said that champagne must be flowing freely this evening at the Kremlin.