Biden halts plans to withdraw troops from Germany
Last June, Donald Trump announced the partial withdrawal of US soldiers from Germany. Joe Biden is now putting a stop to that.
Washington - President Joe Biden has put on hold the plans drawn up under his predecessor Donald Trump to withdraw 12,000 American soldiers from Germany.
Until a thorough review of the deployment of US soldiers worldwide is completed, there would be no troop withdrawal, Biden said in a speech at the State Department on Thursday.
Earlier, General Tod Wolters, who heads the US European Command, had already announced that the plans would be put on hold.
Last June, Trump announced the partial withdrawal of US soldiers from Germany. One of the reasons he gave was that the Nato partner's defence spending was too low. Therefore, a third of the 36,000 soldiers in Germany at the time were to return to the USA or be transferred to other European Nato countries.
The troop withdrawal would have primarily affected three locations in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate. The withdrawal of troops was prevented during Trump's term in office by a package of defence spending laws passed against the president's will.