After his remarks about NATO "Obsolete", his questions about the relevance of the mutual defense clause between the allied countries or his incessant criticism against the insufficient military spending of Europeans, Donald Trump has sparked new tensions within the Atlantic Alliance. Attacking Germany head on, Monday, June 15, calling it "Delinquent" and saying that she should "Billions of dollars" at NATO, the American president launched the idea of reducing to 25,000 the "52,000" US Army soldiers on German soil – there are actually 34,000, supported by 19,000 civilian workers, according to Pentagon figures.
The goal ? Obviously, sanction a country protected by the United States but which has "Arrears", which is "Ridiculous", added the tenant of the White House. A country to which the American president also criticizes, in bulk, his participation in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project with Russia, his migration policy, or his trade surplus with the United States.
The presidential statement in any case surprised everyone. In Berlin, at the head of NATO, among the allies, and even at the American Congress, where no one had obviously been informed of this project qualified as ’"Colossal error" by Ben Hodges, former commander of American forces in Europe, interviewed by the site Politico.
Kay Bailey Hutchison, the NATO ambassador, said on the eve of a meeting of defense ministers in Brussels on Tuesday that she could not deliver details. "As far as we know, (President) asked the military to assess our future structure in Europe and to examine where the troops would best serve deterrence and defense for all of Europe ", said the diplomat.
Avoid overbidding
Visibly taken aback, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, also kept out of the decision, agreed that the question was "Important" for the Alliance, but said it was mostly about the bilateral relationship between Berlin and Washington. The Norwegian official, trying to calm the game, stressed that no official decision was taken. And that in any case the American army was still very present in Europe, where it participated in large-scale maneuvers while strengthening its presence in the East and in the Baltic countries.
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