President Trump says he is weighing whether to reduce the number of U.S. troops stationed in Germany. If he goes ahead, it would reshape the military presence that has allowed America to project power in Europe, the Middle East and beyond.
Trump’s remarks came amid a spat with German Chancellor Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who told a group of students that the U.S. had no discernible strategy to end the war with Iran and that Tehran had humiliated Washington.
Merz struck a conciliatory tone on Thursday, saying Germany was in close contact with Washington regarding the conflict in Iran and stood ready to participate in a European mission to secure the Strait of Hormuz once hostilities had ceased.
“You know this: The trans-Atlantic partnership is of particular importance to me,” he said during a tour of a military training facility in western Germany.
The U.S. bases in Germany have played critical supporting roles for the American military in conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the current war in Iran. A move to substantially reduce troop numbers in Germany could shake the foundation of a setup that has benefited the U.S. as much as it has Europe, say former military officials and analysts.
“U. S. troops in Germany and Europe are not there to guard Germans,” said retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. American assets such as logistics operations and training areas “are for the U.S., not for anyone else,” he said.
While Trump’s warning was echoed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the president’s comments caught some senior U.S. military officers by surprise, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy stressed the need for the U.S.’s NATO allies to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defenses, with a reduced American military presence. But that strategy, which was issued in January, didn’t set a detailed timetable for the shift. The expectation among some U.S. military officials and experts outside government was that the transition would take years and would be calibrated with the growth of European military capabilities.
Trump’s social-media post abruptly put that issue back on the table. It follows the Trump administration’s move last year to remove a combat brigade from Romania.
Germany, occupied by the U.S. and its allies after World War II, has remained the center of the U.S. military presence in Europe ever since. Washington has roughly 35,000 servicemembers in the country, including at the Ramstein air base and the sprawling Landstuhl military hospital nearby, which is being expanded with a new hospital that is being built within the base’s perimeter.
The Kaiserslautern Military Community, which includes Ramstein, is the largest outside the continental U.S. and counts more than 50,000 members, including 18,000 soldiers. With civilian staff and families, the U.S. military presence doubles the troop presence, by some estimates.
U.S. military operations in Germany support American forces not just in Europe but also across Africa and the Middle East, and offer an alternate route to the Indo-Pacific alongside crossing the Pacific Ocean, military officials say.
While the U.S. Air Force didn’t fly combat missions out of Ramstein during the offensive on Iran, according to senior German officials, the base was pivotal in supporting the logistics of the war.
Military officials said the base anchored an air bridge between the U.S., Europe and the Gulf and acted as a key node for command, communications and data transfer for drone and long-range strike coordination. It played a similar role for U.S.-led operations in Iraq and Afghanistan during the long wars in both countries and acted as a primary stop for wounded troops on their way to the U.S.
U.S. European Command, based in Germany, “can ensure the region remains a platform for U.S. Homeland defense” and power projection, said Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who heads the command and is the top military leader in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee last month.
Any withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe would undermine the country’s ability to project power around the world, said Claudia Major, head of trans-Atlantic security research at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. “Most of these troops aren’t NATO soldiers. They serve U.S. interests,” Major said.
In his social-media post, Trump didn’t make clear whether he was considering bringing some troops back to the U.S., shifting them to locations in Eastern Europe or reducing the regular rotation of American forces through the country.
Trump would probably need Congress’s help to durably and sizably reduce troop presence in Europe, though he would have more latitude to shift troops to countries he perceives as friendlier. But such a move would be expensive and complex.
“It’s not just finding barracks for the troops to sleep,” Hodges said. “What’s required for readiness is enormous.”
Troops need training areas to practice combat and their equipment needs maintenance facilities. Military families and civilian support need housing, schools and other infrastructure. Bases should also be located at a distance from potential conflict zones, so countries along NATO’s eastern border—which are among its most pro-American—offer few attractive options.
Ralf Hechler, mayor of Ramstein, said he isn’t worried about the U.S. pulling out of the air base because of how much it is currently investing in the facility, but he fears the military could cut its presence elsewhere.
“You have to take [Trump] seriously,” said Hechler, who is planning a three-day German-American Friendship festival in the town from June 5 to 7. Even a temporary withdrawal would be a big blow to the region, he added.
The U.S. military is the third-largest employer in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, where Ramstein and Kaiserslautern are located, and contributes the equivalent of roughly $2.5 billion to the local economy.
Despite this, the impact of a U.S. pullout would be “mainly relevant locally but negligible at the national level,” said Moritz Schularick, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a think tank.
The U.S. and NATO allies are broadly agreed that European militaries will gradually shoulder more of the burden of the Continent’s conventional defense, while the U.S. will maintain its nuclear umbrella and provide critical capabilities that Europe lacks, such as space-based reconnaissance and in-flight refueling. Europeans have also been quietly drawing up fallback plans to ensure NATO can continue to operate in case of a bigger disengagement by the U.S.
“Trump has been conditioning the U.S. security commitment to Europe on good behavior since January 2025,” said Major. “So rather than spending its energy on being surprised, Europe should be perhaps spending it on improving its defense capacity.”
Write to Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com, Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com