The Pentagon announced late Tuesday that it was pausing the deployment of any additional troops to NATO ally Poland as the Trump administration moves forward with its “America First” agenda and pulls thousands of forces from Europe.
The pause is part of a reduction of U.S. forces in Europe from four brigade combat teams to three, units that each include as many as 4,000 soldiers, tanks and massive amounts of support gear.
President Donald Trump has long pushed European countries to assume a bigger role in their collective defense, but in recent weeks he has seethed at what he sees as a lack of support among core NATO allies for the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
In a statement, the Pentagon called Poland “a model U.S. ally” and said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had called Polish Deputy Prime Minister Kosiniak-Kamysz earlier in the day to assure him that the U.S. would retain a “strong military presence in Poland” despite the planned personnel reduction.
The Defense Department “will determine the final disposition of these and other U.S. forces in Europe based on further analysis of U.S. strategic and operational requirements, as well as our allies’ own ability to contribute forces toward Europe’s defense,” the Pentagon statement says.
The Polish Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The troop reduction has deeply concerned NATO allies as Russia continues its war in Ukraine and threatens the alliance’s eastern flank.
At the outset of the war in 2022, the Biden administration sent thousands of additional troops to Eastern Europe in a bid to deter the Kremlin from acting on any territorial ambitions it may have had beyond Ukraine.
Trump, who has sought unsuccessfully to broker a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv, last year withdrew troops from Romania. The Pentagon said this month that it intends to pull another 5,000 military personnel from Germany — in a move widely seen as punitive after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized the Iran war and said that the United States had been “humiliated.”
While the Trump administration has broadcast its intentions for months, its moves to withdraw forces from Europe has troubled Republican and Democratic members of Congress.
Tuesday’s announcement follows a decision by Hegseth last week to abruptly halt the deployment to Poland of a Texas-based brigade combat team, part of which had already arrived in Poland. The move caught U.S. and Polish officials by surprise.
“It’s a slap in the face to Poland. It’s a slap in the face to our Baltic friends,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) complained to the Army’s acting chief of staff, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, during a hearing last week.
Some soldiers and equipment from the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, were already in position and ready to start a planned nine-month deployment, prompting a scramble to halt additional departures from Fort Hood in Texas and arrange the return of hundreds of personnel who had reached Poland.
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