In theory, “there are no significant legal or political obstacles” for him to try pull troops out of Germany again, said Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the Defense Priorities think tank, given the “very limited leverage” U.S. Congress has over military matters.
The only concrete limit is a 2025 law that prevents the president from leaving fewer than 76,000 troops in Europe. With up to 85,000 soldiers on the continent, that gives him a legal maximum of 9,000 soldiers.
But even doing that would take “four years at the minimum” and could cost “hundreds of billions” of dollars when accounting for indirect expenses too, said retired Gen. Mark Hertling, the former commanding officer of U.S. Army Europe who helped manage a significant American drawdown between 2003 and 2011.
That doesn’t account for broader complexities and costs, he argued, including shifting thousands of soldiers’ families, firing local German workers, closing down hospitals and leaving newly upgraded bases abandoned.
A rapid pullback would also be “extremely damaging” for the U.S. military campaign in Iran, he added, given bases like Ramstein play a significant role in coordinating drone attacks and shipping personnel and equipment to the Middle East.
There are also other practical obstacles for removing soldiers. “Where would they go? You need infrastructure, you need bases, you need housing — that doesn’t just exist somewhere else waiting,” said Claudia Major, senior vice president for transatlantic security at the German Marshall Fund.