NATO and Europe
If Trump withdrew the legal maximum of roughly 9,000 soldiers, that would be “reasonably” damaging for the alliance but not catastrophic, said Ed Arnold, a senior defense expert at the Royal United Services Institute think tank and a former NATO official. European allies could replace those troops, he said, or match them with equivalent capabilities like long-range missiles. Yet that’s unlikely to happen, Arnold argued, because Trump is interested in keeping troops and military assets in Europe to be able to deploy rapidly in conflicts such as the war in Iran. “If they're looking to expand the war in the Middle East, they're actually quite useful being there because then they can move between theaters,” he said, “so this is where the political desires of the president meet the actual operational requirements” of the Pentagon. “You take your troops and also your specialists from where you need … [and] you're actually just going to hurt your own operations.” Arnold said.
