Top US Defense Department officials have begun considering a proposal to withdraw up to 10,000 troops from Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
US President Donald Trump’s policies suggest that the US military presence in Europe is likely to change radically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are several plausible reasons for this policy shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1.<\/strong> \u03a4he US Department of Defense is not excluded from the cost-cutting measures being adopted across the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2.<\/strong> A second possible explanation is that the Donald Trump administration hopes that a reduced US commitment to Europe will be part of a broader improvement in relations with Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recent interactions between top US and Russian officials \u2013 including a lengthy phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin \u2013 indicate that the White House hopes to dramatically warm ties with the Kremlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A closer US-Russia relationship could encourage Moscow to loosen its ties with Beijing, although he notes that many (including \u03a4he Liberal Globe<\/em>) are skeptical of this logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Correcting an Imbalance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trump administration may clearly see the European Union as an adversary and the NATO alliance as the result of an unfair European and Canadian dependence on the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance said at the Munich Security Conference in February, \u201cour European friends must play a greater role in the future of this continent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Observers may perceive the reductions in U.S. forces in Europe as correcting this imbalance. The issue, however, is the manner and extent of the American withdrawal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Top US Defense Department officials have begun considering a proposal to withdraw up to 10,000 troops from Eastern Europe. US President Donald Trump’s policies…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,826],"tags":[25,470,215,70],"class_list":["post-23931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical","category-usa-geopolitical","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23933,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23931\/revisions\/23933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}