President Trump plans to deploy 5,000 additional US troops to Poland
President Donald Trump announced he would send 5,000 additional U.S. troops to Poland in response to the NATO summit and the Polish deployment.
President Donald Trump announced this week that he would send 5,000 more troops to Poland, an apparent retreat from earlier threats to reduce the U.S. military presence in the country as his administration considers withdrawing U.S. forces from Europe to punish countries that do not support the Iran war.
Days after the Pentagon announced that it would reduce troop presence in Europe to levels not seen since before Russia launched its attack on Ukraine, President Trump abruptly announced on May 21, in an apparent switcheroo, that he would send roughly the same number of troops to Poland.
“Given the successful election of Karol Nawrocki, the current President of Poland, whom I was proud to support, and because of my relationship with him, I am pleased to announce that the United States will send an additional 5,000 troops to Poland,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
The comments appear to contradict the Pentagon’s announcement two days earlier that it would reduce the number of brigade combat teams assigned to Europe from four to three, effectively canceling a planned rotational deployment to Poland of the roughly 4,000 Army troops currently stationed in Texas. According to a May 19 Pentagon statement, the reductions are intended to “encourage and enable NATO allies to assume primary responsibility for the conventional defense of Europe.”
President Trump has threatened European leaders in recent weeks to reduce the U.S. presence in Europe (about 85,000 troops) to punish allies for not supporting the Iran war sufficiently. Earlier this month, the military announced that 5,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Germany. The announcement came shortly after the country’s President Friedrich Merz said Iran had “humiliated” the United States in the war.
President Trump and Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth criticized European countries for not doing more to relieve Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital seaway that Iran seized in retaliation for a joint U.S.-Israel attack in late February.
It is unclear whether the additional 5,000 soldiers heading to Poland will come from the same Army units that were originally scheduled to deploy, or from a completely different unit. The Pentagon referred USA TODAY’s questions to the White House, which responded with a link to Trump’s Truth social post and said only that troops would be sent.
Trump administration officials have downplayed the decision or any suggestion that the administration itself is inconsistent. On May 22, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that the administration is “constantly reevaluating the global threat matrix” for the proposed troop reductions.
“None of this is surprising, but I understand why it causes tension,” Rubio said.
“It is widely recognized that Europe’s armed forces will be smaller than they have been historically.”
Vice President J.D. Vance told reporters on the day the Polish troop reduction was announced, ahead of President Trump’s Truth Social announcement, “We’re not talking about removing all U.S. troops from Europe. We’re talking about shifting some of our resources in a way that maximizes U.S. security.”
“I don’t think that’s a bad thing for Europe. It will encourage Europe to take more ownership,” he added.
Vance also characterized this change as a “delay” in troop movement. “Those troops could go elsewhere in Europe,” he said.
Becca Wasser, director of defense research on Bloomberg Economics’ geoeconomics team, said the Pentagon may have gone ahead of Trump in criticizing Poland, which has maintained a good relationship with the Trump administration.
“There’s a disconnect between the Pentagon and the White House,” she said.
“In an effort to make Europe more responsible for its own security and, in many ways, punish various European countries, the Pentagon has ended up punishing a country that President Trump has held up as an example of a model ally.”
Wasser said the move may have been recommended by the Pentagon’s Global Posture Review document, which the Trump administration decided not to make public for the first time in decades, Politico reported.
“There’s a different level of comfort when it comes to withdrawing troops from Germany than when we withdraw troops from Poland,” she said.
Congress outraged by European troop cuts
President Trump’s threat to reduce troops in Europe has sparked outrage among lawmakers, including Republicans, who are increasingly concerned about his threats. Such orders are limited by Congress, which in this year’s Defense Policy Act mandated that the number of U.S. troops on the continent never fall below 76,000.
“I don’t know what’s going on here, but all I can say is that I’m not satisfied,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told Army leaders during a budget hearing last week when news of the cuts broke.
“The careless decision to reduce our military posture in Europe and the moves by Pete Hegseth and his political minions to force out some of our best generals are amateurish at best and deadly at worst,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) wrote in a May 16 post to X., He also mentioned the firing of Army Chief of Staff Randy George.
Withdrawing troops from Germany would reduce the U.S. military buildup in Europe that the Biden administration implemented in response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The impact will likely be “limited” given that at least 36,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Germany, according to a Bloomberg analysis by Wasser and other analysts. But the analysis said the move would likely halt the deployment of U.S. Army battalions specializing in long-range fires, a unique military capability that Europe would struggle to backfill with its own troops.
Hegseth and other Trump administration officials have repeatedly criticized European allies for not focusing on defense spending. At President Trump’s request, NATO agreed last year to increase each country’s defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP).
