President Joe Biden will freeze plans to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany and order the Pentagon to review the state of U.S. military deployments around the world, U.S. government officials said on April 4.
The New York Times reported that Biden’s move would end former President Trump‘s administration’s plan to withdraw troops from Germany and transfer other units to Belgium and Italy, a plan that national security experts consider punitive.
Trump’s troop withdrawal plan has sparked discontent among European leaders, Republican and Democratic lawmakers. They see the U.S. military presence in Europe, particularly in Germany, as a cornerstone of the post-World War II order.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan announced the freeze on the withdrawal plan, which he called a “global force posture review,” before Biden’s visit to the State Department on April 4. The freeze is consistent with Biden’s series of reversals of Trump’s initiatives at the Pentagon over the past two weeks.
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