German Federal Government

Force in Play

Publicly accepting; pivoting toward European defense autonomy

U.S. troops have been stationed in Germany continuously since 1945. On May 1, 2026, the Pentagon began rolling back a piece of that posture: roughly 5,000 service members—about one in seven Americans currently in the country—will leave over the next 6 to 12 months, taking a full brigade with them. A long-range fires battalion that the U.S. had pledged to deploy at the 2024 NATO summit, designed to put deeper-strike weapons on alliance soil for the first time since the Cold War, was cancelled in the same order.

Updated Yesterday