Trump’s threat to withdraw troops is serious for Europe

The unit affected offers a vital capability

IT BEGAN AS a minor spat, but it soon grew into a row with consequences for European security. On April 27th Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor, said that America was being “humiliated” by Iran and that it “obviously had no strategy” in the war it had started alongside Israel. True, but rash to say so. A peeved President Donald Trump said he would withdraw some 5,000 American troops stationed in Germany, and perhaps more elsewhere.

At first glance the numbers seem small when set against the roughly 39,000 Americans stationed in or rotating through bases in Germany and the 80,000 active-duty American troops across Europe. But America also said it would no longer deploy one of its three newest and most potent units.

The Multi-Domain Task Forces (MDTF) is the centrepiece of the US Army’s modernisation. It combines rocket units equipped with very long-range cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons with top-of-the-range computing and communication wizardry. Speaking to journalists in February, Colonel Jeff Pickler, the commander of the 2nd MDTF, which had been assigned to Germany, said it would use AI tools to be able to identify 1,500 targets every 24 hours, which is far more than could be found using traditional means. “There are not enough people that we could stuff in a headquarters or a command post that will ever be able to fully process all of that.”

Though the MDTF would only be able to fire salvos of about 16 missiles at once, it could have a disproportional effect in terms of managing escalation dynamics, says Fabian Hoffmann of the Norwegian Defence University College. Because it is backed by America’s very large nuclear forces, it could strike sensitive or strategic Russian targets with less risk of Russia responding with nuclear weapons.

The loss of the MDTF highlights the need for Europe to build vastly bigger stockpiles of its own long-range missiles if it wishes to reach a similar level of deterrence. “The shock is that it takes a Trump outburst to force European politicians to address our own capability gaps,” Mr Hoffmann says. ■