NATO assessing details of US troop withdrawal from Germany

Al Jazeera:

NATO says it is assessing the details of the United States’s decision to withdraw about 5,000 troops from Germany, a key partner in the Western security alliance, amid tensions over the war on Iran.

In a statement on Saturday, NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said the bloc is “working with the US to understand the details of their decision on force posture in Germany”, a process the US Pentagon estimates will unfold over the next six to 12 months.

The planned drawdown comes as US President Donald Trump feuds with European allies for not doing more to assist in the US-Israel war against Iran. He has voiced particular ire at Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who recently said the US was being “humiliated” by Iran’s leadership.

Trump responded by urging Merz to stop “interfering” over Iran and spend more time “fixing his broken country”. The US president has also called NATO a “paper tiger” and “absolutely useless”.

Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane, reporting from Berlin, said the US troop reduction appears to be among a series of measures aimed at “really hitting the Germans where it hurts”, including tariffs on EU automobiles that are expected to cost Germany’s economy billions.

The actions “needs to be seen through the prism of this tension between the Trump administration and the Merz government,” said Kane.