US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has tried to reassure allies over US decisions on troop deployments in Europe.
Rubio’s intervention at the end of a Nato foreign ministers’ meeting in Sweden came after President Donald Trump said the US would send an extra 5,000 troops to Poland.
That decision was a week after a planned deployment of 4,000 troops to the country was cancelled and days after an announcement that US troops would be pulled out of Germany.
The Pentagon on Tuesday said that it was reducing the number of US Army Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) in Europe from three to four.
The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a statement that the US was reducing the number of its soldiers on the continent as a result of a “comprehensive, multilayered process” focused on US posture in Europe.
A BCT comprises 4,000 to 4,700 personnel, according to a congressional report.
The Liberal government is nominating Canada’s top military commander to be the next chair of the NATO military committee when the post becomes vacant next year.
Defence Minister David McGuinty announced the candidacy of Gen. Jennie Carignan on Wednesday and said she’ll continue in her current role until next year.
An election for the post will be held in September.
A golden parachute jump?
Secretary of State Marco Rubio wonders what the point of the United States remaining in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is if countries in the alliance won’t help the United States when needed.
Rubio made the comments on Wednesday in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity aboard Air Force One en route to the summit in China. He questioned whether the countries are actually committed to an alliance with the U.S. after several NATO countries refused to grant the U.S. permission to use its air bases for operations in the war with Iran. Rubio was miffed with those countries’ decision.
VILSECK, Germany—A line of tattooed, beefed-up men with bushy beards and American accents formed at the bakery in this tiny Bavarian town on a recent May morning. U.S. muscle cars are driven down the medieval streets here, where Americans outnumber Germans 2 to 1.
Enclaves like this sprouted across Germany in areas occupied by U.S. forces after World War II, shaping the society around them for several generations. Elvis Presley served near here in the 1950s and performed at the local pub.
But Germany’s “Little Americas” are dying out.
Latvian and Canadian troops are conducting a large-scale exercise with ground drones for the first time, taking remote warfare out of the skies and applying it directly to the battlefield.
They’re taking lessons from ex-Ukrainian soldiers and tech companies in a stunning reversal of training roles, and scrambling to adapt the new technology just as the Baltic country is plunged into a political crisis over a mistaken aerial drone strike on an oil storage facility.
“For me, it’s no doubt that drones are coming into the game,” said Latvian Lt.-Col. Andris Bruveris, commander of the Second Mechanized Infantry Battalion, known as the Iron Battalion.
For years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been playing a sleazy double game: presenting himself to the West as a regional mediator and responsible NATO ally while simultaneously transforming Turkey into a sanctuary for Hamas terrorists outside the Gaza Strip.
New revelations emerging from Israeli security investigations have shattered any illusion that Turkey’s relationship with Hamas is limited to “political support” or “diplomatic engagement.” The evidence increasingly points to a situation far more alarming: Turkey has become a primary operational, logistical, and financial hub for Hamas’s global terror infrastructure.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has claimed that Europe has “gotten the message” from President Donald Trump, who has vowed consequences for the disloyalty displayed by supposed allies during the conflict with the Islamist Iranian regime.
Last week’s announcement of the withdrawal of around 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany—followed by Donald Trump’s warning that there will be “many more”—has shaken Europe’s strategic landscape at a particularly sensitive moment.
Not only because of the scale but because of the transatlantic context: direct political friction between Washington and Berlin, war in the Middle East, and a NATO that is once again questioning itself.
Germany remains the main U.S. military hub in Europe, with more than 36,000 personnel, key infrastructure such as Ramstein and Stuttgart, and a central logistical role for operations across three theaters—Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The announced withdrawal affects only a fraction, but the message Washington intends to send carries greater weight.
President Trump has made no secret of his disdain for our NATO allies. In the past month or so, he has called them “cowards” and NATO a “paper tiger.” But, as I have written elsewhere, his notion that we should just get out of NATO is blocked by both the NATO Treaty and by a specific U.S. law that requires either a resolution passed by both houses of Congress or a two-thirds vote of the Senate. Neither is going to happen.
Mr. Trump, as commander-in-chief, has constitutional authority to remove troops from the nations that have refused us the use of our bases to attack Iran. The United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany have all refused use of our bases there or use of their airspace or both.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has warned that the Western NATO military alliance is in jeopardy of “disintegration” in the wake of the announced U.S. troop drawdown in Germany.
On Friday, the Pentagon said that around 5,000 soldiers would be relocated from bases in Germany over the next year amid a broader shift in the forward deployment of U.S. forces. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the drawdown in Germany would likely be much larger, though he did not specify how many more of the approximately 36,000 U.S. troops would be relocated from the country.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s assertion that the US is being “humiliated” in its war against Iran has triggered a new confrontation between Europe and President Trump. Four days after the comments were made, the Pentagon announced plans to withdraw 5,000 troops from its bases in Germany.
Many experts see it as a waypoint in the American military’s continuing uncoupling from the Continent. There are more than 38,000 active US troops in the Federal Republic and on Saturday the defence minister, Boris Pistorius, implied the move was expected, saying: “We Europeans must take on more responsibility for our own security.”
🚨 JUST IN: President Trump says the US will be withdrawing "A LOT" more troops from Germany than the 5,000 announced yesterday
FINALLY.
Bring our troops home! We don't need NATO — NATO needs US!
"We're going to cut WAY down and we're cutting a lot further than 5,000" 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/I4RBJnb3qL
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) May 2, 2026
Payback to the base for the Iran conflict?
Russia is already waging war on Poland, and Nato must respond more forcefully to its next attack, a senior Polish general has said.
Poland shot down Russian drones deep inside its airspace last autumn, while Moscow-linked hackers have attacked government infrastructure and ministries of thousands of times — including a cyber-assault that sought to cripple the power grid in midwinter.
President Trump has intensified his personal attack on Friedrich Merz, telling the German chancellor to spend “less time on interfering” after Berlin ridiculed the war in Iran.
In a social media post, the US president told Merz to concentrate on Ukraine peace efforts and called Germany a “broken” country.
President Trump Is Considering Pulling Troops From Germany Amid Tensions With NATO Countries
President Trump announced late Wednesday that he is considering withdrawing some U.S. troops currently stationed in Germany, after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the United States is being “humiliated” by Iran in both the conflict and ongoing negotiations.
Nato members scrambling to rearm for a potential war with Russia face “empty shelves” after three decades of neglect in the defence industry, the alliance’s former top military officer has warned.
Armed forces face “unacceptable” waits of up to seven years for tanks, fighter jets and Patriot air defence missiles, Admiral Rob Bauer told The Times after the Kyiv Security Forum last week. Bauer, a former commander of the Dutch armed forces, stepped down as chairman of Nato’s military committee last year.
He said President Trump had been a “blessing” for renewed investment, pushing all Nato members to hit the decade-old target of spending 2 per cent of national income on defence and to agree to raise it to 3.5 per cent by 2035. But manufacturing cannot keep pace with the extra funding, he said.
