Nail-biting NATO allies eye U.S.

Trump’s mentions of troop removal weigh on Europe

WASHINGTON — After 18 months of Donald Trump’s “America First” presidency, European leaders meeting with him this week fear that the United States might change its traditional course and begin to bring American troops home from the continent.

It comes as nations, especially in Eastern Europe, are lobbying the United States to increase the number of troops on the continent as they worry about combating an increasingly aggressive Russia.

“They are scared to death,” former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Mcclatchy. “They are worried about a very unpredictable president of the United States. They are increasingly worried he is going to do things not based on what’s in the best interest … but based solely on his vision of ‘America First.’”

Trump has talked about bringing U.S. troops home from around the globe since he was on the campaign trail espousing a strategy he dubbed “America First,” but he has yet to act.

The Pentagon is already reviewing the impact of withdrawing some of the 35,000 active-duty American troops in Germany, The Washington Post reported last month.

The fate of American troops in Europe is not expected to be on the agenda of the Brussels meeting of NATO, the alliance formed after World War II to counter a Soviet, now Russian, threat. But it will loom large, as it comes just before Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.

Magnus Nordenman, who worked as a defense analyst and a strategic planning consultant for major European defense industry companies, said European allies are “absolutely worried” after hearing Trump disparage allies of the G-7 as well as NATO members’ contributions and seeing him eager to meet Putin as well as North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.