Washington wants to rebuild a capable, conventional deterrent without agitating the country it is meant to deter.
By: Caroline D. Rose
In early June, White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien signed a memorandum authorizing yet another drawdown of American troops, this time directing the Pentagon to remove more than a quarter of its forces stationed in Germany and placing a cap of 25,000 personnel in the country.
Following similar actions throughout the Middle East, the move affirms Washington’s commitment to restructuring its defense posture.
This restructuring, or at least the timing of it, may not have been possible without the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent recession, which have been distracting enough to give the U.S. Defense Department the opportunity to act on its long-term plans to counter conventional threats.
Chief among them is Russia. Moscow’s adventurism in Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere over the past decade reminded Washington that it ought to strengthen its forces along Europe’s eastern flank.
Hence why it is moving its soldiers in Germany farther east to places like Poland. But this is more of a balancing act than a true pivot; Washington isn’t vacating Germany entirely any more than it is setting up a new iron curtain in Poland. Instead, the U.S. is layering its forces, keeping a permanent presence in Germany while supporting its rotational presence along the Eastern European frontier.
Germany Makes Eastward Force Projection Possible
After the end of World War II, U.S. operational presence in Germany was the foundation of its Cold War strategy and was thus seen as the guarantor of peace on the Continent. Creating a transatlantic foothold was as much about safeguarding North American interests as it was about making sure Europe didn’t again succumb to the kind of infighting that would implicate everyone else in another world war.
Implicit in the strategy was to keep Germany from rearming and reemerging as a continental power.
The 1949 Occupation Statute enabled Allied forces to monitor West German disarmament while keeping a close eye on Soviet forces, and even after West Germany gained autonomy over its military, the 1954 Convention on the Presence of Foreign Forces enabled the U.S. and its NATO partners to remain in the country. And for 40 years, American forces in Germany swelled. At the height of the Cold War, Germany hosted 400,000 foreign troops – more than half of them American.
But for nearly two decades, the U.S. has been slowly chipping away at its operational presence in Germany. After the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated, the Pentagon understood that Eastern Europe was no longer the threat it once was and so began a gradual disengagement, which was accelerated by the global war on terror after 9/11.
During the early 2000s, the Pentagon reduced ground forces to a few combat brigade teams, and scaled down the size and scope of operations as other NATO members eased conscription and slowed large-scale reinforcement. As a result, from 2006 to 2018, Washington clipped its presence in Germany by half.
In that sense, O’Brien’s announcement in June is pretty standard stuff, especially since the U.S. has no intention of leaving Germany altogether.
The country is simply too important to transatlantic operations and too integrated into its defense infrastructure.
U.S. bases in Germany continue to play a core role in the U.S. defense posture, second only to Japan in terms of gross numbers of U.S. soldiers.
Germany serves American defense interests not just in Europe but also in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
The U.S. stages its largest foreign base in Bavaria, stores 20 B61 bombs in the Buechel air base, and uses its Ramstein and Stuttgart bases to conduct operations in conflict zones such as Yemen and Afghanistan.
Germany hosts a world-class training center for U.S. forces and its partners in Grafenwoehr, five of seven army garrisons in Europe, and a level-III trauma care center that services U.S. personnel, contractors and embassy workers. Germany may not be Europe’s easternmost frontier, but it makes eastward force projection possible.
Pivot to Poland?
The U.S. still has some of the same imperatives it did in the Cold War, but the theater has changed. German reunification and the liberation of former Soviet satellite states have put more than 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) between U.S. installations in Germany and the near-500,000 Russian troops stationed along the Western Military District.
And as Russian provocations have intensified and distrust among NATO members has increased, Eastern European governments have encouraged the U.S. to deploy to the region as a deterrent.
Hence Washington’s relatively newfound interest in Poland, which occupies an area on the North European Plain that has historically served as a flashpoint in Russia-Europe tensions.
Poland’s natural distrust of Russia makes it a natural U.S. ally, as does the fact that it is geographically close to Russia, is one of six NATO members that actually meets the defense spending target of 2 percent of gross domestic product, has launched a $5 billion 2026 Technical Modernization Plan that will provide its forces with fifth-generation equipment (fighter jets, unmanned armored vehicles, assault helicopters, short-range rockets and submarines), and has demonstrated time and again that it is more than eager to build the necessary infrastructure to host American forces.
The U.S. already has a growing presence in the country: a rotational Armored Brigade Combat Team, a U.S.-led multinational NATO battle group, and an Air Force detachment.
And since 2018, the U.S. has made public plans to build a forward-deployed division headquarters, pre-positioned equipment, logistical units and MQ-9 Reaper drone squadron there.
Even so, the U.S. has come to realize that making Poland the vanguard of the eastern front is easier said than done. There are legal, logistical and financial obstacles in Washington’s way. Foremost among them is any perceived infringement of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, which prohibits the U.S. and its NATO allies from constructing any permanent basing in former Warsaw Pact countries.
Some argue the act is outdated – rendering its commitments void – but the Kremlin has signaled that permanent U.S. basing in Russia’s former buffer zone would, in any security environment, cross a red line. The Founding Act is why the U.S. will be consigned to rotational deployments to Poland for the foreseeable future, careful not to incite a serious Russian reaction without having the legal upper hand.
Moreover, Poland and the U.S. are on very different pages. Just one year ago, U.S. President Donald Trump and Polish President Andrzej Duda agreed to a 1,000 troop bump and plans for a permanent base to be called “Fort Trump.” But discussions have broken down. Poland has lobbied Washington to increase the amount of ABCTs and combat enablers, while the Pentagon dismisses the idea as too ambitious.
The Pentagon has already reactivated its V Corps with the goal of eventually sending rotational troops to an undisclosed location in Eastern Europe (widely suspected to be Poland) for command and control operations, but standing up additional brigades when the Defense Department has only 11 armored brigades would be exceedingly expensive.
The bigger disagreement, however, is over where exactly to position U.S. forces. Warsaw wants U.S. forces smack-dab on Poland’s border with Russian client state Belarus – a move that could easily ruffle the Kremlin’s feathers. The U.S. prefers to position itself a few steps back in central or western Poland where it can keep a healthy distance from Russian troops and is closer to some of its German installations.
The U.S. is trying to walk a fine line. It’s determined to rebuild a capable, conventional deterrent without overly agitating the country it is meant to deter. For all the talk of drawing down troops in Germany, this isn’t an “either/or” situation. As military destinations, Poland and Germany complement U.S. interests, so the allocation of resources between the two needs to be thought of within the context of the United States’ broader strategic defense needs.
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