‘The Responsible Statecraft’: The U.S. Army is about to get smaller, especially in Europe

Thousands of U.S. troops could come out of Poland and Germany to meet the admin's stated goals and priorities, ‘The Responsible Statecraft’ notes.

To meet Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s budgetary and strategic goals, the U.S. Army will have to shrink, and the number of U.S. ground forces in Europe is likely to decline sharply. The Trump administration should not apologize for these changes. Though the moves will face pushback, they are badly needed and will better align U.S. military commitments with the country’s security priorities and available resources.

Since President Donald Trump’s second term began, his national security team has set some clear priorities: ending the war in Ukraine, securing the homeland, and shedding unnecessary costs and defense burdens to focus more attention on Asia. But the administration has been vague about what these goals will mean for the size and shape of the U.S. military and its forward presence overseas, especially in Europe where some 100,000 U.S. forces are currently stationed.

When he was in Europe in February, Hegseth was emphatic that the United States could no longer serve as the continent’s primary security guarantor due to “strategic necessities” including the challenges of competing with China and protecting the southern border. Though such assertions seemed to imply a pending drawdown of U.S. military presence in Europe, the Pentagon has avoided addressing the topic directly since.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio sounded a somewhat different tune on his own trip to Europe in April. Calling media speculation “hysteria and hyperbole,” Rubio argued that the United States had no intention of pulling away from NATO but simply wanted “NATO to be stronger.” Indeed, NATO officials have heard nothing specific from the United States about changes to U.S. military presence in Europe, but their fears and questions remain.

The answers NATO allies seek do not lie on the European continent, however, but in Hegseth’s major initiatives at home: realigning the Pentagon’s massive budget to fit the administration’s national security goals and mobilizing U.S. military power in support of President Trump’s border policies.

First, there is Hegseth’s February 18 memo instructing senior military officials and DoD leaders to draw up plans to cut 8% per year from their budgets for each of the next five years. The exercise is not focused on reducing the defense budget topline, however, but identifying resources that can be reallocated to the Trump administration’s defense priorities, including 17 areas Hegseth exempted from cuts.

Hegseth’s guidance leaves those looking for cost savings with relatively few choices. The protected categories cover many of the Pentagon’s priciest budget items: U.S. operations on the southern border, munitions programs, missile defense, executable ships and nuclear submarines, and military construction in Asia, among others. Notably under-represented on the list is the Army, for instance its prized modernization programs and support to commands in Europe or the Middle East, where Army personnel play the largest role.

On their own, these budget-driven cuts might not affect U.S. Army force posture in Europe. But there’s a second key factor: Trump’s militarized approach to the U.S. southern border — an activity that Hegseth protected in his memo.

According to the commander of NORTHCOM, General Gregory Guillot, the border mission will last “years not months,” extending the burden they place on Army forces. In nine months or a year, the currently deployed units will rotate home and new soldiers will take their place. If the mission lasts all four years of Trump’s term, as many as 40,000 ground forces might serve a stint on the southern border.

Ultimately, the combined pressure of force structure cuts and a sustained border security mission will leave many fewer Army personnel available for overseas deployment at any given time. U.S. Army presence in Europe is likely to bear the brunt of this shortfall, with reductions in permanent and rotational forces — up to 10,000 or 20,000 personnel — from Germany or Poland possible and even necessary to balance competing demands. The Army— and especially a smaller Army — can only stretch so far, and Hegseth has made clear that operations on the border rank above U.S. commitments in Europe in the Trump administration’s hierarchy.

Congress will howl against such moves, but reductions in Army force structure and presence in Europe are long overdue. The number of Army BCTs and the size of the service’s special operations and combat support forces remain bloated following the end of the 20-year global war on terror, leaving plenty of room for cuts.

Likewise, U.S. Army presence in Europe has increased significantly over the past 10 years, and now far outstrips what is necessary given the current threat picture, U.S. interests in the region, and the responsibilities of allies.

The Trump administration should not be shy about its plans to right-size the U.S. Army’s force at home and in Europe.

Trump is very skeptical about Europe
Pic.: FT

The Trump administration clearly views the European Union as an adversary — and the NATO alliance as resulting in an unfair European and Canadian dependency on the United States. As U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance said at the Munich Security Conference in February, “our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent.” Observers might perceive cuts to U.S. forces in Europe as righting this imbalance, ‘The Foreign Affairs’ stresses.

A reduction in U.S. forces based permanently in Europe can’t happen instantly. But because administration officials may want more immediate results, it is likely that they would pursue quick wins where possible.

The most obvious option is to reduce the number of rotationally deployed U.S. forces on the continent—troops who are sent to Europe for nine-month rotations without family members. Since Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, the United States has sent thousands of U.S. troops to Europe on a rotational basis, primarily to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, which are the countries most exposed to Russian intimidation. Ending those rotations could happen quickly, possibly within weeks, if Trump ordered the Pentagon to do so.

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