With President Donald Trump regaining control of the White House this year, European leaders are working on ways to deal with icy relations with the United States.
“Europeans have serious preparation problems… They’re trying to fix it, but it takes time,” Kamille Grand, a former NATO official currently at the European Council of Foreign Relations, said in a Washington Post report on Sunday. “If Trump decides, ‘I’m going to pull US troops out of Germany because he’s upset about the trade imbalance,’ it’s far more complicated to manage than saying he has plans to do this within X years. ”
As European leaders are increasingly unsure about the future of Trump’s second-age continental security, the comments report that the Washington Post is wary that the US president is too friendly with Moscow, and that around 20,000 US troops deployed by Joe Biden before Joe Biden after Joe Biden’s full-scale invasion of Russia’s Iqalline.
“I wouldn’t be surprised at some point [those troops] NATO diplomats returned to their American base and told the outlet, pointing out that in an emergency, those forces were sent to Europe, and that their exit was “a return to normalcy, so to speak.”
World leader Buck Zelensky following Trump, Vance oval office spat
In Europe, there is growing concern that President Trump will allow Russian President Putin to divide the Western Alliance. (Getty Images)
The current number of US troops in Europe has fluctuated between 75,000 and 105,000 since 2022. According to data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the number cap is the result of a surge in troops to the areas ordered by Biden.
But fears continue that these numbers could fall more rapidly than expected under Trump, despite assurances from Trump administration officials that there is no immediate plan for a major continental cut.
These horrors have been underpinned by recent events, including Vice President JD Vance’s remarks at a security conference held in Munich. American leaders have old European leaders on suspicion of sharing from common values, such as freedom of speech and Trump’s expansion with Ukrainian President Voldy Mirzelensky.
However, as the US focuses more effort on confronting China’s new threat in the Indo-Pacific, and Europe is responsible for a greater share of its own security, the US presidents of both parties have warned European leaders of a potential shift in the potential shift in military forces from the continent.
Chinese President XI Jinping (via AP/file via Li Gang/Xinhua)
JD Vance step into the spotlight to defend Trump’s foreign policy with an oval office dust-up with Zelensky
In fact, the footprint of US military in Europe has already declined dramatically since the end of the Cold War, CSIS data shows. During hostilities between the US and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s, nearly half a million troops were deployed on the continent. By the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War, Europe still had around 350,000 US troops. This fell to over 100,000 more at the turn of the century.
Despite consistent warnings, European leaders now fear that the timeline that moves troops from the continent will accelerate further under Trump, leaving holes in European security countries that are still unable to meet.
Army’s Air Tro Forces prepare for a blank fishing in Germany on March 15, 2022 (US Army photo by Markus Rauchenberger)
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“Frankly, I’m worried that I’ve been given the mercury nature of President Trump. How confident Europe is in the level of America’s protection and defense,” Nigel Gould Davis, a former British diplomat and senior fellow at the Institute for International Strategy, told the Washington Post.
Michael Lee is a Fox News writer. Before joining Fox News, Michael worked for Washington examiners, Bongino.com, and for the impartial US. He has covered politics for over eight years.
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