The US will scale down its troop presence in some of the countries on NATO’s eastern flank, as the Trump administration reviews its military footprint in Europe.
“This is not an American withdrawal from Europe or a signal of lessened commitment to NATO and Article 5,” according to a statement from the US Army on Wednesday, referring to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s mutual defence clause.
“Rather this is a positive sign of increased European capability and responsibility,” the statement continued. “This force posture adjustment will not change the security environment in Europe.”
The reduction affects only a limited number of forces out of the roughly 85,000 US troops stationed in Europe, given a brigade is usually composed of several thousand soldiers. In its statement, the Army said the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division would redeploy to its base in Kentucky.
The decision doesn’t amount to “a full withdrawal” of US soldiers and will affect Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, Romanian Defence Minister Ionut Mosteanu said earlier on Wednesday.
The latest announcement also appears to only impact those four countries for now. Defence officials from other European states on the eastern flank have said they haven’t been notified by the US of any plans for imminent troop drawdowns.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who supports a friendly foreign policy toward Russia, said he wasn’t surprised by the US decision as he understood that US President Donald Trump needed to use the resources elsewhere.
“We need to be much more efficient in how we allocate defence spending,” Fico told journalists in Visnove, in northern Slovakia.
European leaders have expressed anxiety about some potential reduction in US troop numbers under Trump, with many officials in the region expecting at least a reversal of a surge of some 20,000 troops under former President Joe Biden.
Allies have been urging the Trump administration to coordinate any plans to withdraw US soldiers deployed on the continent to avoid destabilising NATO’s defences and undermining the ability to deter Russian aggression.
Changes to US military posture are not unusual, according to a NATO official, who declined to be named. Even with the latest adjustment, the US has more forces on the continent than before 2022, the person said.
Romania will continue to boost investments in its own defense and increase its presence in the Black Sea region together with NATO and European allies, according to Mosteanu. The country will be left with about 3,500 foreign soldiers after the US decision, he said.
Trump promised in September that the US won’t pull troops from Poland and signalled Washington could even increase its military presence there as he praised Warsaw for its robust spending on defence. The US began rotating more troops into NATO’s eastern members following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Romania, a NATO member since 2007, has been allocating more than 2% of gross domestic product for defence spending for years, even boosting its outlays to 2.5% of GDP last year.
“This decision isn’t by any means a disaster as many US soldiers will remain by our side and will continue to participate in NATO activity,” Mosteanu said.
(With additional reporting from Daniel Hornak and Greg Sullivan)
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