Donald Trump threatened to pull U.S. military troops out of Germany because he feels that they don’t pay their fair share in military spending.
According to a new report by The Wall Street Journal, German officials are “unimpressed” by Trump’s threat and believe that he will lose the upcoming U.S. election.
According to the report, German officials are aware of Trump’s horrible polling numbers and believe that former President Joe Biden will win in November.
The German officials believe that Biden will either leave the troops in place and send them back after he is inaugurated.
According to the report, some German officials are publicly reacting to Trump’s claim that “Until they pay, we’re removing our soldiers.”
“So far, Germany is unimpressed. Few politicians have commented on the move and military experts have said the punishment would mainly undermine the U.S. military’s ability to conduct operations in Africa and the Middle East,” the WSJ reports of the president plan to pull out 9,500 troops from Germany and cap the total stationed there at 25,000.
“After Richard Grenell, then U.S. ambassador to Germany, first floated the notion of a pullout last year, a senior German official said the chancellor [Angela Merkel] would accept it and had little hope that relations with the U.S. administration would improve as long as Mr. Trump was in office,” the reports states before adding “But Mr. Trump’s waning support in polls is fueling hope in Berlin that he might lose the coming election. German military experts doubt that the pullout can be organized before the election. Joe Biden, Mr. Trump’s Democratic challenger, has said he wouldn’t remove troops from Germany if he were elected president in November.”
According to retired brigadier general Erich Vad who serves as a military adviser to Merkel, the president’s proposal hurts Americans more than Germans.
“This will have no real effects on the security of Germany; what the Americans have here is a hub that serves the logistical support of their presence in the region and beyond,” Vad explained.
