Trump announced the shift on Thursday night in a Truth Social post, saying the decision was linked to his admiration for Poland’s MAGA-aligned President Karol Nawrocki.
That followed last week’s decision by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to halt a planned deployment of a 4,000-troop armored brigade to Poland — something that blindsided Poland, one of America’s most loyal European allies and one of NATO’s top defense spenders.
Hegseth’s Poland move was linked to an earlier decision by Trump to punish German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for criticizing the war against Iran by removing 5,000 troops from Germany.
Rutte on Friday stressed Trump’s latest deployment decision would not change NATO’s longer-term push for “Europe to be stronger” so that, “over time, step by step,” European allies become less dependent “on a single ally, the United States.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that direction of travel, hinting on Friday that further drawdowns of U.S. troops were in the works. But he insisted those reductions would not be reprisals — and would be coordinated with allies. The earlier moves in Poland and Germany caught European countries off guard.
“The United States continues to have global commitments that it needs to meet in terms of our force deployment and that constantly requires us to reexamine where we put troops,” he told reporters. “This is not a punitive thing, it’s just something that’s ongoing.”