Like a mad king of old, President Donald Trump spends hours wandering his palace, developing plans to better display his wealth and glory to an increasingly skeptical and antagonistic world. Occasionally he remembers his royal responsibilities and implements the right policy, though even then often for the wrong reason.
Such as reducing the number of U.S. troops in Germany. At least it’s a start, though resulting from a fit of pique, since Berlin, like virtually every other government on earth, criticized his lawless, reckless attack on Iran, which is disrupting the global economy. He is threatening to do the same to Italy and Spain, whose political leaders also have denounced Trump’s bungled aggression, openly conducted on behalf of the Israeli government rather than the American people.
However, he is taking this action only more than a year into his second administration. After more than five years as president, and another four years in between terms contemplating his agenda if reelected, the president has merely announced the transfer of 5,000 personnel. All the while launching multiple aggressive military actions and pushing the largest military buildup in American history.
Trump first denounced the Europeans and others for free riding militarily decades ago. The message seemed clear: Washington should not forever treat defense as international welfare, wasting American wealth and risking American lives to protect what the Europeans did not believe to be worth defending: their own peoples and countries.
During his first term the president displayed plenty of bark. Previous administration had routinely criticized the Europeans for openly leaving the heavy lifting to Washington. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was particularly blunt shortly before his 2011 retirement: “Future U.S. political leaders—those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me—may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.” Trump was even more ostentatiously contemptuous of the Europeans and talked about leaving the alliance.
However, nothing happened. Indeed, his appointees to the Departments of State and Defense, National Security Council, and elsewhere generally backed the status quo, maintaining American military welfare for nominal allies around the globe. In his first administration’s final months, Trump threatened to transfer some forces out of Germany, but that plan died with his 2020 election defeat. If all he intends to do now is reshuffle a few thousand soldiers here or there, he shouldn’t bother. He will end up increasing costs to American taxpayers without reducing the risks of needless entanglement in other nations’ wars.
Indeed, Trump’s troop tergiversations highlight what is wrong with his presidency. He has no consistent philosophy, policy, or plan for foreign and military policy other than personal pique. He didn’t like President Barack Obama, so he tossed the JCPOA nuclear deal without any replacement policy, leaving Tehran free to enrich uranium. Then he joined Israel’s perpetual war against the Islamic Republic, angry that the latter wouldn’t surrender to him. He continues to drag down the international economy because Tehran has withstood his insults and bombs, humiliating him, just as Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz opined.
Now, amid his disastrous war, the president is miffed that European leaders criticized rather than lauded him for playing the incompetent warlord. Merz’s observation predictably triggered a torrent of Trumpian insults, as well as the threat to revive, several years on, plans to reduce U.S. force levels. That’s been enough to generate whining in Berlin, but so far insufficient to end Washington’s military presence in the Federal Republic or limit America’s involvement in another European war. Trump is blustering about doing even more, as well as threatening to take similar action against Spain and Italy. However, he did not follow through in the past and European leaders have heard it all before. Consequently, they are paying little attention to Trump’s latest rants. They are far more concerned about his ongoing assault on the global economy through his seemingly endless quasi-war on Iran.
While a U.S. drawdown—which should lead to shrinking, not expanding, U.S. force structure and military outlays—is long overdue, Trump is treating the American military like a presidential honor guard rather than a national defense force. He moves it around to promote his personal pleasure rather than advance American security interests. Once in a while, like now, the two purposes coincide. However, the fact that it took him more than five years as president to act in this case demonstrates that most of the time the national interest is far from his mind.
Indeed, Trump’s lack of desire to avoid unnecessary foreign conflicts was demonstrated last year when he used Washington’s security dominance to extort cash from allied states, through punitive and destructive tariffs, and even more dubious foreign investment programs designed to put more of the U.S. and international economy under White House control. Japan and South Korea struck bad deals. The European Union made a truly awful agreement, essentially surrendering to the president and accepting his costly trade agenda—of which, it should be emphasized, the American people are the primary victims.
Despite some welcome increases in European military outlays, frankly due more to Vladimir Putin than Donald Trump, the Europeans remain reluctant to take the tough steps necessary to protect a continent with a larger population than and economy comparable to America. The U.S. defense dole enables “European governments to spend a certain amount on butter that might otherwise have gone on guns,” observed Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh. Months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Nathalie Tocci of the Istituto Affari Internazionali bluntly called Europe’s “defense efforts … underwhelming.” Last year the International Institute for Strategic Studies reported that “the gaps in [European] military hardware and software are considerable, and the IISS estimates that replacing key elements of the U.S. conventional military capabilities assumed to be assigned to the Euro-Atlantic theatre could cost approximately USD1 trillion.”
Where will the money come from? Even today the Europeans remain badly divided over alliance commitments, with serious barriers and loopholes remaining that obstruct rearmament, including a five percent of GDP commitment that doesn’t take effect until well after Trump’s departure from office, meaning it might never be implemented. No wonder Europeans remain determined to preserve the Pentagon’s international dole, which explains the continent’s economic surrender to the Trump administration. And, sadly, the latter’s willingness to keep subsidizing Europe’s defense. Trump’s policy is not focused on protecting America and avoiding foreign wars but using U.S. military personnel to promote an ostentatiously dirigiste and exploitative economic agenda around the globe. He appears to care little whether American blood is shed so long as dollars—as well as Euros, Yen, Won, and more—flow back to the U.S.
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Of course, sometimes, like now, Trump’s personal pique might help serve America’s interest. However, that confluence is rare and only coincidental. The president’s belief that he is “running the world” and “on par with great, norm-defying, historical figures,” even “the most powerful person to ever live,” should remind us of Lord Acton’s warning that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Unfortunately, the results are most likely to be bad, even disastrous, such as his Iranian misadventure—a conflict which Trump entered frivolously as well as foolishly to advance the political interests of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather than defend the security interests of the American people, and for which the entire world is now paying.
The Pentagon should be about domestic defense, not foreign welfare. Donald Trump is so far proving to be worse than his hated predecessors, Joe Biden and Barack Obama, in doing the bidding of other governments. However, he could become the president who finally put America first when it came to foreign and military policy. He still has time to remember his promise to make America great again.
