The Wall Street Journal last week announced the U.S. administration’s decision to withdraw 9500 of the 34,500 soldiers present at the American NATO base in Ramstein in Germany. The news surprised everyone apparently, not only the various NATO partners and Germany itself, but also officials from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon. According to Reuters, the Pentagon has not yet received a formal order to cut troops. The White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany responding to media reports made a statement: “We have no announcements at this time. I know there’s reporting out there, but, as of this moment, there are no announcements …”. And Germany has not been consulted. Peter Beyer, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, told the Rheinische Post newspaper “This is completely unacceptable, especially since nobody in Washington thought about informing its NATO ally Germany in advance”.
Surely Trump is not a strategist and often acts in an unpredictable and impulsive way. On the one hand, the move could be linked to his American disengagement policy in the world by reminding his electoral base that he does not forget the main message “America first”, but it could also be linked to his pro-Russian policy. To understand better than must be seen what decision Trump would take regarding these troops: they will be sent back to the United States, relocated to Poland as many analysts are assuming, or elsewhere. Almost all observers interpreted the announcement as a counter-response to Angela Merkel’s refusal to host Putin for a G7 in the United States in June. But this would not be the first dispute between Washington and Berlin. Immediately after his elections, Trump began to attack allies in Europe and especially Germany, as the Europe’s largest economy, on the Iranian issue (in 2018 Trump would have abandoned the nuclear deal JCPOA with Iran) and on defense spending inside of the Atlantic Alliance. He specifically called for an increase in their military spending to 2% of GDP by 2024 in order to reduce the cost incurred by the US from providing transatlantic defense. The Trump administration’s attempts to stop the Nord Stream 2 project (it could double Russia’s supply of natural gas to Germany) is another issue with Berlin.
The truth is that we cannot know the reasons for this announcement and we just have to wait and see. Of course we can notice that the news caused many concerns as well as surprises. Twenty-two Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee called on President Donald Trump Tuesday to reverse his decision, warning that a withdrawal would send the wrong signal to Russia. According to The Guardian Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Defense Committee in the UK parliament said “Weakening NATO in the hope this will lead to increased German defense is a dangerous game which plays into Russia’s hands.” It is not the first time that allies have not been consulted on important issues by Trump administration. It also happened with Trump’s announcement to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, an arms control agreements meant to reduce the risk of war between Russia and the West and to ensure stability and predictability on the European continent.
The decrease of 9500 troops in Germany per se to Russia would not bring any particular benefits, but certainly a discord within the Atlantic Alliance and a weakening of relations is to its advantage. If Trump were to really make that decision by moving troops to Poland, the situation would be different. A possible dislocation of troops in Poland would violate the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, through which any country that wishes and fulfills the conditions can apply to join NATO. Violation of this agreement would be a first step to justify Russia’s annexation of Crimea. But Trump’s attitude towards international agreements is known and is a cause of concern for some of the European elites.
Ramstein and Germany’s strategic importance for the US: Germany is home to five of the seven US Army garrisons in Europe and US European Command (EUCOM) headquarters is in city of Stuttgart. Thanks to NATO an estimated 20 nuclear weapons are believed to be kept at Germany’s Büchel Air Base in western Germany. Ramstein’s base hosts the largest portion of US troops in Europe, about 38,000 troops and contractors that adding relatives, wives and children to over 60,000. (The figures may change due to the rotation that occurs to other countries). It is almost a city. American citizens have their schools, shops, police forces and postal services. Five American colleges have campuses on the base.
Ramstein is the most important Air Force cargo base abroad. It is the primary logistical hub for all U.S. operations in the Middle East, Afghanistan, North Africa, and South Asia. In October 2011, within the base opened a new hyper-tech center, the Air and Space Operations Center, with 40 communication systems, 553 workstations and more than 22,000 connections. The center would be vital to the USA’s drone program on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. On 2015 The Intercept reported that the “U.S. military base in Ramstein, Germany serves as the high-tech heart of America’s drone program. Ramstein is the site of a satellite relay station that enables drone operators in the American Southwest to communicate with their remote aircraft in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and other targeted countries“.
A world-class training center at Grafenwoehr was transformed in 2006 and trains soldiers from US and many other countries. In the Landstuhl area the Regional Medical Hospital is a level III trauma care center. It serves not only to soldiers from battlefields in various areas, but also to members of military families, and to Embassies from Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Evidently such a hospital is not enough given that the USA are currently building a new, larger military hospital in Weilerbach for their own soldiers at a cost of $ 990 million.
So in spite of Trump’s discontent and the grooming on the budget (and this would not be all wrong) a united NATO would be of great importance not only to Europe, but also an important strategic advantage for the US.
