President Donald Trump plans to pull about 20,000 U.S. troops from Europe, according to a leading Italian news agency.
A European diplomatic source told ANSA that Trump, who entered office on Monday for a second term, wants to reduce the American contingent in Europe by about 20 percent and plans to ask for a “financial contribution” for the maintenance of the remaining troops.
Yes, but only if the EU doesn’t immediately replace the vacuum with their own forces.
(Do any of the EU nations have nukes that aren’t owned by the US? Sadly such a deterrent is probably a requirement.)
European Nations have sufficient Nukes as a deterrent. Well I reckon one nuke plus their warheads would incapacitate most cities. There are like 500-600 officially between UK and France.
We’ve seen war between nuclear nations. It’s not necessarily a deterrent from war. Russia is not using nukes against Ukraine either. It’s merely a deterrent from escalation to that degree.
Ofcourse, having nukes is not a guarantee, but highly increases deterrence. Also, most wars we’ve seen are cold wars and or proxy wars though.
Ukraine had a huge nuclear arsenal (third in the world), which it then ceded to Russia in the 1994 Budapest memorandum Kyiv post.
I’ve added some information to my previous comment. Europe might be able to replace the conventional forces, but my concern would be the ICBM defense capabilities. The US MDA has a lot of infrastructure in Europe, and that system has been fantastically expensive to develop and required decades of research and engineering build, and I doubt it can be replaced in less than 20 years.
Good to know. That’s worrying indeed.