U.S. lawmakers reject Trump’s plan of withdrawing troops from Germany in the final version of NDAA
The U.S. lawmakers have unveiled the final version of National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which has refused to honour the proposal of outgoing President of the U.S. – Donald Trump, to withdraw troops from Germany and keep the names of Confederate generals on military bases.
The U.S. $ 740 billion and 4500-page NDAA has been finalised after months of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives. The NDAA is passed every year since 1961. It addresses everything from pay increases for U.S. troops to how many ships or aircraft can be purchased to how to address issues related to China and Russia.
The NDAA has agreed to retain the U.S. troops in Germany. It has also limited the ability of Department of Defense to reduce the number of active-duty service members below 34,500 in Germany, without an assessment of its impact.
Prior to this, Trump had proposed to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany. Of this, 6,400 U.S. troops were supposed to return home and the remaining were to be repositioned to other The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members like Italy and Belgium. Trump believes that Germany’s spending on defence is too low and it is not viable to keep the U.S. troops posted there. It was initially agreed by all alliance members that defence spending should reach 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 20204. Germany, along with many other countries, has yet to meet this target. This has definitely not gone down well with Germany and other European nations.
At that time, Trump had said, “We spend a lot of money on Germany, they take advantage of us on trade and they take advantage on the military, so we’re reducing the force.”
The House of Representatives would pass the Bill early next week. It would then be sent to the Senate. Once approved by the Senate, it would reach Trump for final signature or veto. Trump is most likely to veto the Bill because of a provision to strip the names of Confederate military leaders from U.S. bases, which was passed by both the Republican-led Senate and Democratic-led House with bipartisan support.
It is to be noted that a large portion of the American-German population has a military background. A large number of American soldiers were stationed in Germany after World War II. Numerous American military installations were established during this time with major focus on Southern Germany. At the time of German Reunification in 1990, there were still about 200,000 U.S. soldiers in Germany. By 2014, the number had been steadily reduced to 42,450 stationed in 38 facilities.
