WASHINGTON — President Biden is freezing plans to withdraw 12,000 American troops from Germany, administration officers mentioned on Thursday, and has ordered the Pentagon to conduct a evaluation of how American forces are deployed all over the world.
The transfer would halt a Trump administration plan — which many nationwide safety specialists had seen as punitive — to convey some American troops residence from Germany and to shift different models to Belgium and Italy. That plan, which got here final summer season, rankled European leaders and angered each Democratic and Republican lawmakers, who view the presence of American troops in Europe, and particularly in Germany, as a cornerstone of the post-World Struggle II order.
Mr. Biden’s freeze of the troop withdrawal, introduced Thursday by Jake Sullivan, the nationwide safety adviser, forward of the president’s go to to the State Division additionally accompanies what Mr. Sullivan known as “a world power posture evaluation.”
The freeze is in line with a sequence of strikes the brand new president has made within the final two weeks to undo former President Donald J. Trump’s initiatives on the Pentagon. Mr. Biden has additionally ended his predecessor’s ban on transgender troops serving within the navy and, by Protection Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, purged from Pentagon advisory boards a number of dozen members who have been appointed within the waning days of the Trump administration. The Biden administration additionally introduced Thursday that it was discontinuing American assist for the Saudi-led conflict in Yemen.
The highest American commander in Europe signaled the evaluation in remarks to reporters on Wednesday, when he mentioned that Mr. Austin was “within the strategy of conducting a really, very thorough evaluation” of Mr. Trump’s drawdown plan.
“The brand new administration has comfortably acknowledged to us that we have to conduct a radical evaluation, cradle to grave, in all areas,” Gen. Tod D. Wolters, the pinnacle of United States European Command and NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, mentioned in a information convention from Mons, Belgium. After the evaluation, he mentioned, “we’ll return to the drafting board.”
In saying Mr. Trump’s plans final summer season, his deputies on the Pentagon tried to painting it as a wanted reshuffling. However that effort was undercut by Mr. Trump himself when he complained — on the identical time his administration was saying the withdrawal — that Germany was, in his phrases, “delinquent” in its navy spending.
The withdrawal announcement final summer season blindsided German officers and even some American navy officers, who’ve lengthy regarded on the American troop presence in Germany because the bedrock of its dedication to NATO.
A Protection Division official mentioned Thursday that it was unclear whether or not Mr. Biden modify the troop ranges in Somalia. In one of many final Pentagon-related acts in his presidency, Mr. Trump ordered the 700 American troops who have been coaching and advising Somali counterparts within the battle in opposition to the Shabab in East Africa to go away Somalia. On Jan. 17, the Pentagon introduced in a brief assertion that the American troop withdrawal from Somalia was full.
Lots of these troops merely relocated to close by Kenya, although.
Mr. Biden should additionally resolve what to do in regards to the remaining 2,500 American troops in Afghanistan. Mr. Trump final 12 months struck a cope with the Taliban that requires the withdrawal of American troops by Might 1, however that withdrawal is dependent upon whether or not the Taliban meets its personal dedication to finish violence there.