German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told a June 25 session of the Atlantic Council that President Donald Trump’s plan to draw down US troops in Germany sends the wrong signal to Russia.” NATO, for us in Germany and for myself, is an alliance of the US with European and other states that have common interests but, more importantly, that share values,” she said. “NATO is not a trade organization, and security is not a commodity. But it’s about how we all together deal with the threats of our time.”
“If troops are redeployed to the US, you have to make sure you don’t send the signal, which would be incorrect, that the United States is less interested in Europe. If troops are moved to the Indo-Pacific area, that would mean a new strategic focus,” Kramp-Karrenbauer went on. And if those troops are moved to Poland, she said, NATO members—with the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, designed to guide relations between the alliance and Moscow, in mind—must “stand visibly united and ... stick to this treaty that we’ve agreed to.”
