Expandable and Increasingly Expensive, NATO Spreads All Over Europe

Expandable and Increasingly Expensive, NATO Spreads All Over Europe

The NATO Summit took place in Brussels on July 11-12 at the level of Heads of State and Government of the 29 member countries. The summit confirms at the highest level the strengthening of the control structure, which is mainly to work against Russia. A new joint command for the Atlantic will be constituted, in Norfolk, Va., in the United States, against “the Russian submarines which threaten the lines of maritime communication between United States and Europe,” and a new logistic command, in Ulm, Germany, as a “deterrent” against Russia, with the task of “moving the troops more rapidly through Europe in whatever conflict arises.” 

By 2020, NATO will have 30 mechanized battalions, 30 air squadrons and 30 combat vessels in Europe, which can be deployed against Russia within 30 days or less. President Trump will thus have stronger cards in his hands at the bilateral summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 16 in Helsinki. The situation in Europe will depend fundamentally on what the U.S. president determines at the negotiating table. 

NATO’s reach extends far beyond Europe and the Alliance’s own members. It has a number of partners, linked to the Alliance by different military cooperation programs. Among the currents that are included in the Euro-Atlantic Partnership are Austria, Finland and Sweden. The Mediterranean partnership includes Israel and Jordan, which have permanent official missions to NATO headquarters in Brussels, plus Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania.  

The Gulf region includes Kuwait, Qatar and the Emirates, with permanent missions to Brussels, plus Bahrain. NATO also has nine “Global Partners” in Asia, Oceania and Latin America – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mongolia, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Colombia – some of which “actively contribute to NATO military operations.” 

NATO – founded in 1949, six years before the Warsaw Pact, formally based on the defensive principle established by Article 5 — has been transformed into an alliance which, based on the “new strategic concept,” commits member countries to “conduct crisis response operations not provided for by Article 5, outside the territory of the Alliance.” According to the new geostrategic concept, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has extended to the Afghan mountains, where NATO has been at war for 15 years. 

What has not changed, in the mutation of NATO, is the hierarchy within the Alliance. It is always the President of the United States who appoints the Allied Supreme Commander for Europe, who is always a U.S. general, while the Allies simply ratify the choice. The same applies to the other key commands. U.S. supremacy has been strengthened with the enlargement of NATO, since the countries of the East are tied more to Washington than to Brussels.  

The same Maastricht Treaty of 1992 establishes the subordination of the European Union to NATO, which includes 22 of the 28 countries of the EU (with Great Britain leaving the Union). Article 42 of the Treaty states that “the Union shall respect the obligations of certain Member States, which see their common defence realised in NATO, under the North Atlantic Treaty.” And Protocol No 10 on cooperation established by Article 42 emphasises that NATO “remains the foundation of defense” of the European Union. 

The Joint Declaration on EU-NATO cooperation, signed yesterday in Brussels on the eve of the Summit, confirms this subordination: 

“NATO will continue to play its unique and essential role as the cornerstone of collective defence for all its allies, and the EU’s efforts will also strengthen NATO.”  

The Pesco and the European Defence Fund, stressed Secretary General Stoltenberg, “are complementary, not alternatives to NATO.” Military mobility” is at the core of the EU-NATO cooperation, as enshrined in the Joint Declaration. The “EU-NATO maritime cooperation in the Mediterranean to combat the smuggling of migrants and thus alleviate human suffering” is also important. 

In this framework, under pressure from the United States, the European allies and Canada have increased their military spending by 87 billion dollars from 2014. Despite this, President Trump will be slamming his fists at the summit table, accusing the allies of spending less together than the United States. 

“All the allies are increasing their military spending,” assures NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg. (defensenews.com, June 7) 

The number of countries that spend at least 2 percent of their GNP on military spending has increased from three in 2014 to eight in 2018.  

Between now and 2024, European allies and Canada are expected to increase their military spending by $266 billion, bringing NATO’s total military spending to over $1 trillion annually. Germany will bring it to an average of $133 million per day in 2019 and plans to increase it by 80 percent by 2024. Italy has undertaken to increase it from the current $82 million a day to around $117 million a day. This is required by what is defined in the government program as “Italy’s special ally.”

***

NATO, super-headquarters as expandable as war

Great symbolic importance is given to the fact that it is the first Summit convened in the new headquarters of the Alliance, which has so far cost 1.3 billion Euros or $1.5 billion (but the real price, 7% of which is borne by Italy, is still to be established): it’s a structure of over 2.5 million square feet, almost double the previous one, where a permanent staff of about 4,000 military and civilians works, equipped with 18 large halls where more than 5,000 meetings are held annually with an average participation of 500 guests per day. The structure, currently made up of eight major wings and four minor wings connected to a long central body, is of a modular type: therefore expandable as NATO continues to expand.

In 1990, on the eve of the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, US Secretary of State James Baker assured USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev that 

“NATO will not extend by a single inch to the East”.

But in 1999, while demolishing the Yugoslav Federation with the air war, NATO included the first three countries of the former Warsaw Pact: Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Then, in 2004, it extended to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (formerly part of the USSR); Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia (formerly members of the Warsaw Pact); and Slovenia (formerly part of the Yugoslav Federation). In 2009, it included Albania (once a member of the Warsaw Pact) and Croatia (formerly part of the Yugoslav Federation); in 2017, Montenegro, also part of the Yugoslav Federation. 

After having expanded in 1999-2017 from 16 to 29 members, NATO leaves “the door open” to other entrances: Ukraine and Georgia, already part of the USSR, are waiting to enter; Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, already part of the Yugoslav Federation. For this reason, NATO has set up an expandable headquarters.

*

This article was originally published on Il Manifesto.

Translation by John Catalinotto

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Manlio Dinucci, Global Research, 2018

https://www.globalresearch.ca/expandable-and-increasingly-expensive-nato-spreads-all-over-europe/5647554

FBI Chief Mueller Drops Indictments against Russia Intel Ops.

FBI Chief Mueller Drops Indictments against Russia Intel Ops. as Deep State Panics Over Trump-Putin Summit

On the eve of Trump’s historic meeting with Vladimir Putin– with Russia-US relations at their worst since the fall of the USSR – Grand Inquisitor Robert Mueller handed down 12 indictments of Russian military intelligence operatives accused of participating in the 2016 hacks of the DNC, DCC and Clinton presidential campaign. This is it, we’re supposed to think. The proof we’ve all been waiting for – that Russia hacked the election. It’s not quite the holy grail of Collusion, but it’s red meat to the starving faithful. It is now the skeptics’ turn to wipe the egg off our faces.

No?

US courts will indict a ham sandwich, goes the proverb. Mueller indicted 13 Russians linked to the “troll farm” Internet Research Agency in February, hoping that they wouldn’t bother to appear in court, not being bound by US law or having anything to gain by participating in his show trial. But a few sent their lawyers and demanded discovery, which would have forced Mueller to reveal the evidence he had against them. Finding his own indictments riddled with errors – one of the companies named didn’t even exist at the time of the election – Mueller quietly backpedaled. Score one for the Russians.

But this time he has evidence, right? Surely he wouldn’t make that mistake again. And this time it’s Russian military operatives, not some two-bit troll-farmers! The indictment accuses them of spear-phishing Democratic staffers and using those login credentials to access the party’s servers, stealing the famous documents and leaking them to the public through Wikileaks and DCLeaks (though they seem unsure whether DCLeaks is a person or a website). Isn’t this what we’ve all been waiting for?

Perhaps it would be, if the FBI had actually encountered the servers firsthand. Government investigators (from both the FBI and the DHS, which also wanted in on the action) never even laid eyes on the “hacked” servers belonging to the DNC and DCCC, instead relying on the assessment of a computer security firm headed by a Russian expat with an ax to grind against his former government. Dmitri Alperovitch’s CrowdStrike specializes in attributing malware attacks to state actors – a no-no in the computer security industry, and something he was discouraged from doing by former employer McAfee (whose founder has personally commented on the lack of evidence implicating Russia in the DNC hack). Alperovitch launched CrowdStrike to offer his attribution services to clients like the US government which might care more about blaming a hack on a government than finding out how to protect against such hacks in the first place. 

The DNC hired CrowdStrike to find evidence that Russia was behind the hack on its servers. CrowdStrike dutifully found (produced, embellished) that evidence. When the FBI came knocking, the Democrats had no interest in getting a second opinion about who’d been rooting around in their digital underwear drawer, and Alperovitch certainly didn’t want some upstart security expert revealing his business model was hideously flawed. Fortunately, James Comey’s FBI was sympathetic to the Democrats’ concerns and took CrowdStrike’s assessment as valid legal proof as if its own agents had poked through those servers themselves.

If this dubious information, sourced from an unaccountable third party never placed under oath with numerous reasons to lie or at least mislead, was used as evidential basis for any indictment, that indictment cannot stand up in court. The foundations of Mueller’s case collapse on even the most cursory scrutiny (that article refers to the original 13 indictments, but unless a clean chain of evidence was used to generate the latest 12, its conclusions remain applicable). CrowdStrike delivers geopolitically-actionable conclusions swaddled in just enough technical jargon to dissuade observers from looking too closely. It’s a perfect dance partner for the Deep State hawks who want war with Russia, whether it’s another 50 years of cold war or (and this is what they jerk off to at night) a hot, sexy, nuclear war, a proper World War 3, something they could tell the kids about (if they hadn’t nuked humanity off the planet). 

(A footnote to the whole affair is that whoever “hacked” the DNC and DCCC merely leaked secure information and internal communications that revealed the extent of Democratic Party corruption, and the notion of “hacking the election” is something of a misnomer as no voting machines were tampered with; sure, it would have been nice to get a bipartisan view, with the Republican Party’s dirty laundry hung out for all to see, but exposing the crimes of others is not the same as committing them oneself. Indeed, one viable alternate explanation of the DNC hacks is that a disgruntled Party worker leaked the documents himself, frustrated with the unfair treatment Bernie Sanders was receiving at the hands of Clinton’s minions within the Party.)

Congress is in the process of handing Trump authorization to deploy “usable nukes” in a theatre of war that is rapidly expanding to cover the entire globe (and now space, because when you’re printing money with no basis in reality, the sky is literally the limit). There’s no reason to use nukes in Afghanistan, the poorest country in Asia, nor even in Iran, since it’s too close to Israel to risk decades of fallout and radiation sickness for the guys pushing the whole regional conflict. The nukes are for Russia, for when the next false flag “chemical attack” in Syria (that Russian intelligence is already warning us about, if we would actually listen to them this time instead of continuing to fund the terrorists responsible for the last one) inevitably touches off a hot war with Russia.

Trump’s meeting with Putin has the potential to put the WW3 genie back in the bottle, to remove fingers from triggers on both sides. Russia has been developing new weapons at a pace unseen since the Soviet years, now that the US has been poking a stick in their geopolitical eye for 4 years over Ukraine, but the US cannot afford a prolonged arms race – we are already throwing more than half of every tax dollar at the Pentagon just to maintain the aging arms infrastructure we have. Most of that money is going toward waging the insanely destructive, strategically self-defeating don’t-call-them-wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya – and paying the contractors the military must hire as they run out of indigent youth willing to risk their lives to pay for college, and equipping the monstrously wasteful aircraft carriers that have become little more than sitting ducks in the wake of Russian and Chinese advances in missile technology. Trump’s meeting with Putin could set the two countries back on a peaceful path. This is unacceptable for the war machine.

Americans are sick of Russiagate, but desperate times call for desperate measures. There’s nothing new in the information that led to these indictments – Mueller long ago despaired of coming up with actual proof that Russians “hacked” the 2016 election, hence his more recent diversions into Trump and Cohen’s personal finances, Stormy Daniels’ panties, and the byzantine financial dealings of Trump Inc. But only by hysterically hammering away at the Russia-Hacked-Our-Democracy narrative can the establishment hope to raise popular opposition to the Trump-Putin summit. Democrats, taking a break from shedding crocodile tears for separated migrant families, have demanded Trump call off the meeting until Putin says he’s Very Very Sorry and Won’t Do It Again. Establishment media have jettisoned journalistic standards – New York ran a cover story this week claiming the KGB has been “undoubtably following” Trump for decades, even though the KGB ceased to exist when the Soviet Union fell and pre-1991 Trump was small potatoes (whoever threw this infographic together also seems confused as to whether one woman is Putin’s daughter, or whether Wendi Deng dated him at some point, but let’s take their word on the whole Trump-KGB thing, shall we?). Panic reigns as peace threatens to break out.

Trump’s meeting with Putin could set the two countries back on the path to peace and sanity, or irrevocably on the road to the war the military-industrial-intelligence complex is salivating for. The media establishment has long known Trump’s primary vulnerability was his outsize ego, and used accusations of Russian puppetry to manipulate him into antagonizing the country he’d campaigned on easing relations with. One hopes that by now, after two years of superhuman restraint from Russia as the US’s disgusting and illegal military adventures in Syria racked up Russian casualties – and no such restraint from certain unelected factions of the US government – Trump might be more willing to take up a dialogue with the Russian president. Certainly, they should be able to bond over their demonization in the American press.

*

Helen Buyniski is a journalist and photographer based in New York City. She covers politics, sociology, and other anthropological/cultural phenomena. Helen has a BA in Journalism from New School University and also studied at Columbia University and New York University. Find more of her work at http://www.helenofdestroy.com and http://medium.com/@helen.buyniski.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Helen Buyniski, Global Research, 2018

https://www.globalresearch.ca/fbi-chief-mueller-drops-indictments-against-russia-intel-ops-as-deep-state-panics-over-trump-putin-summit/5647560

Why is Israel allowed to be a Rogue State?

Why Is Israel Not Being Held to the Same International Standards as All Other UN Member States?

Why is Israel not subject to the regulation and inspection of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the United Nations?

Why is Israel not a party to the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Why is Israel not a party to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)?

Why is Israel not a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)?

Why is Israel not a party to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC)?

Why is Israel allowed to ignore UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2334 which states that ‘Israel’s Settlements Have No Legal Validity and Constitute a Flagrant Violation of International Law’ and which requires the removal of all illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories?

Why is Israel allowed to maintain an inhuman, 11-year illegal blockade of essential goods and services against 1.8 million civilians in Gaza, now virtually without electricity 24/7 and kept near to starvation and collapse, in an Israeli bid to illegally force regime change?

Why is Israel allowed to illegally occupy the Syrian Golan Heights?

Why is Israel allowed to illegally occupy the old city of Arab East Jerusalem?

Why is Israel allowed to have induced 600,000 of its citizens to illegally occupy the Palestinian West Bank in violation of the Geneva Conventions on Human Rights?

Why is the state of Israel uniquely in the world today allowed to violate international law and United Nations Resolutions with impunity?

Why is the Israel Lobby allowed to infiltrate the US Congress, the British Parliament and other legislative councils worldwide when Israel is in gross breach of international law on a daily basis? Why?

*

Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Duran.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-is-israel-not-being-held-to-the-same-international-standards-as-all-other-un-member-states/5647568

Neoliberale Rechtsbescherming

Nieuw wetsvoorstel geeft minister vrijbrief voor vergaand doorlichten burgers

Minister Dekker (VVD) voor Rechtsbescherming heeft een wetsvoorstel gepubliceerd dat belangrijke principes van de huidige privacywet grotendeels buiten werking stelt. Alle beschikbare relevante gegevens bij zowel overheid als bedrijven en instellingen kunnen straks voor elk denkbare overheidstaak worden gekoppeld om mensen door te lichten. Het parlement krijgt daarbij geen inspraak.

Op dit moment mag de overheid alleen gegevens gebruiken voor specifieke doelen en als dat absoluut noodzakelijk is. Met dit wetsvoorstel wordt dat omgedraaid. Het uitgangspunt voor het gebruik en delen van gegevens gaat van "nee, tenzij de noodzaak is aangetoond" naar "ja, tenzij er grote bezwaren zijn". Alle gegevens mogen zo in principe voor elke controlerende taak van de overheid worden ingezet, ook als ze voor een heel ander doel zijn verzameld en ook als ze bij andere (private) organisaties liggen.

De minister komt hier nu mee, omdat de nieuwe Europese privacywet AVG dit via een achterdeurtje mogelijk maakt. Volgens artikel 6, lid 3 AVG mogen gegevens ook voor andere doelen worden gebruikt als daar maar een wettelijke regeling voor is. Dit achterdeurtje is op voorstel van de Nederlandse regering in de wet gekomen.

Doorlichten

De belangrijkste reden voor dit wetsvoorstel is om meer ruimte te scheppen om burgers en bedrijven beter te kunnen controleren. Straks kunnen op elk denkbaar gebied waar de overheid een controlerende taak heeft, de gegevens van elke denkbare partij, ook van private bedrijven en instellingen, aan elkaar worden gekoppeld. Vervolgens wordt afwijkend gedrag gedefinieerd met bijbehorende criteria. Iedereen die binnen deze criteria van afwijkend gedrag valt, wordt er door het algoritme uitgepikt waarna opsporingsbeambten deze mensen nader onder de loep nemen.

Het algoritmen en de criteria die gebruikt worden om mensen eruit te pikken blijven geheim. D66, GroenLinks en de SP vinden dat een probleem, omdat algoritmen door mensen worden gemaakt en daardoor fouten en vooroordelen bevatten. Dit kan leiden tot onterechte verdachtmaking van mensen en discriminatie van bepaalde groepen. Minister Dekker (VVD) heeft al laten weten dat de algoritmen desondanks geheim blijven en dat mensen naar de rechter kunnen stappen als ze denken dat ze onrechtmatig behandeld worden.

SyRI

Het eerste samenwerkingsverband dat al op deze manier werkt, is het zogeheten SyRI-systeem. Met dit systeem worden gegevens van maar liefst 17 aandachtsgebiedenover burgers samengevoegd om hen door te lichten op mogelijke fraude met uitkeringen of toeslagen. Over SyRI is veel onrust ontstaan vanwege de onbegrensde verzameling gegevens die aan elkaar wordt geknoopt. Burgerrechtenorganisaties, waaronder het Nederlands Juristencomité voor de Mensenrechten (NJCM) en Stichting Privacy First hebben daarom de staat voor de rechter gedaagd.

Met deze nieuwe wet zullen er vele SyRI-achtige systemen ontstaan voor de verschillende controlerende taken die de overheid uitvoert, zowel bij de landelijke overheid als bijvoorbeeld bij de gemeenten. Het kan met dit wetsvoorstel overal voor worden ingezet ter controle "op de naleving van wetten en voorschriften". Speciaal genoemd worden onder andere de controle op belastingheffing, op uitkeringen, op toeslagen, op subsidies, op het gebruik van voorzieningen, voor het handhaven van de openbare orde en het opsporen van verdachten.

Geen inspraak parlement

In dit wetsvoorstel is vrijwel niets concreet ingevuld of afgebakend. Alles kan op een later moment met een Algemene Maatregel van Bestuur door de minister zelfstandig worden ingevuld. Of het nu gaat om het specifieke doel waarvoor gegevens uitgewisseld worden, om welke gegevens het gaat, welke organisaties mee doen of de bewaartermijnen van gegevens, alles is vrij door de minister in te vullen.

Op deze manier geeft dit voorstel de minister een algemene vrijbrief om voor zelfstandig aan te wijzen doelen mensen en bedrijven door te lichten op geheime criteria. De minister hoeft nergens aparte instemming meer van het parlement voor te vragen als deze wet van kracht wordt. Zo stelt het kabinet met deze algemene vrijbrief het parlement op dit gebied nu en in de toekomst buiten werking.

Consequenties niet te overzien

Vanwege de open formulering is het voor zowel de Eerste als Tweede Kamer onmogelijk om de reikwijdte en de consequenties van dit wetsvoorstel te overzien. Worden burgers straks op elke activiteit of gedraging doorgelicht? Het parlement kan onmogelijk vooraf vaststellen of dat telkens wel voldoende noodzakelijk is, zoals dat volgens onder andere de Grondwet wel moet worden aangetoond. Het wetsvoorstel geeft verder geen enkel inzicht waarom het noodzakelijk is om het doorlichten van burgers zo vergaand met een algemene vrijbrief in te richten.

Als u trouwe lezer bent van deze website, weet u dat we altijd constructief mee proberen te denken. Maar dit wetsvoorstel gaat zo ver over de grenzen van vrijheid en privacy in onze samenleving, dat dit voorstel geheel van tafel moet. Ons advies aan het parlement is dan ook om zichzelf niet buiten werking te laten zetten. Neem geen wet aan die de overheid een vrijbrief geeft om mensen op elk denkbaar gebied door te lichten. Mocht er een noodzaak zijn om dat op een specifiek gebied te doen, dan dient de minister daarvoor fatsoenlijk langs het parlement te gaan, zodat men bij ieder voornemen van tevoren weet waar men toestemming voor geeft.

Kabinet wil vrijbrief voor onbeperkt koppelen gegevens

Het kabinet komt met een voorstel om alle beschikbare gegevens voor elk gewenst doel te mogen koppelen. Het kabinet stelt hiermee de Wet bescherming persoonsgegevens gedeeltelijk buiten werking.
Lees verder >>>

Onbeperkt gegevens koppelen een stap dichterbij

Het onbeperkt koppelen van gegevens die de overheid over burgers verzamelt, is door nieuwe Europese regels een stap dichterbij gekomen. Met de nieuwe regels wordt de Nederlandse Wet bescherming persoonsgegevens op een cruciaal punt buiten spel gezet.
Lees verder >>>

https://www.privacybarometer.nl/nieuws/3928/Wetsvoorstel_geeft_minister_vrijbrief_voor_vergaand_doo...lichten_burgers

Germans Want US Troop Withdrawal

Poll: Germans Want US Troop Withdrawal, Oppose Increased Military Spending

According to a YouGov poll conducted by Germany’s DPA news agency, 42% of Germans support a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in the country.

By Whitney Webb 
MintPress News

July 14, 2018

BERLIN — After over 70 years, Germans have apparently had enough of the U.S. troop presence in their country, the second largest presence of U.S. troops abroad after Japan. According to a YouGov poll conducted by Germany’s DPA news agency, 42% of Germans support a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in the country with 37% of Germany wanting them to stay and 21% undecided. Currently, Germany hosts close to 35,000 U.S. soldiers and between 30 and 40 U.S. military bases.

The poll also found that support for withdrawal came from across the German political spectrum. For instance, 67% of voters from the left-wing Die Linke party were found to support a U.S. troop withdrawal while 55% of the far-right, nationalist AfD party also expressed support for their removal. The Green party of Germany also backed withdrawal by 48%. Support was lowest among voters of the CDU party, the political party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at 35%.

Other findings from the poll show that there is little popular support among Germans for militarism in general, but particularly U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent demand that NATO members such as Germany work to increase their military spending to a new target of 4% of national GDP. Some German political analysts have asserted that Trump’s demand is aimed at increasing European purchases of U.S.-manufactured weapons systems.

On this point, however, the poll found that only 15% of Germans support increasing military spending to just 2% of GDP. Furthermore, 36% of Germans feel that the country already spends too much on military spending. Yet, despite the lack of support for increasing military spending among Germans, Merkel stated on Thursday that, after a “very fundamental” discussion during the recent and “very intense” NATO summit, Germany must spend more on NATO defense.

Even though he has pushed Germany and other NATO countries to push for increased military spending despite a lack of popular support, Trump could still prove an unlikely ally for Germans eager to see at least a reduction in the number of U.S. troops stationed throughout the country.

U.S. Military Personnel Deployments by Country. Source | Visual Capitalist

Indeed, just two weeks ago, Trump was allegedly very surprised to learn the high number of American soldiers stationed in Germany. According to a report in the Washington Post, Trump’s surprise prompted him to ask the Department of Defense to analyze the feasibility of conducting a large-scale withdrawal or transfer of the U.S. troop presence stationed in Germany.

However, U.S. government officials have seemed to have talked Trump out of actually taking action on a withdrawal of troops from Germany. Notably, U.S. military officials, such as retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges who commanded U.S. Army Europe until late last year, have asserted that any reduction in the U.S. military presence in Germany would be a “colossal mistake.” Hodges further claimed that Russia, particularly Russian President Vladimir Putin, would emerge the “big winner” and that any reduction of the American military presence in Germany would “embolden Russia in terms of its adventurist, intimidating foreign policy.” In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he also expressed confidence that Trump’s suggestion of a troop withdrawal was just a negotiating tactic and that “Pentagon planners would agree to keep troop levels in Germany on the current scale.”