As of early 2026, the U.S. had almost 170,000 active-duty troops stationed abroad in approximately 750 military bases located in some 178 different countries. Germany has long been one of the countries with the largest number of U.S. troops, more than 36,000 at last count. Currently, Japan with more than 54,000 houses the most, followed by South Korea with 23,000, Italy with 12,000, and the United Kingdom (U.K.) with 10,000. Others are scattered around the world. Clearly this is largely a result of World War II and the subsequent Cold War. Of course, many other factors also play a role including U.S. geostrategic interests in the Middle East and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, among many others.
However, U.S. President Donald J. Trump has recently decided to withdraw some 5,000 American troops from Germany and has declared that he is thinking of doing so for Spain and Italy too. These withdrawals are driven by disputes over the Iran war, with Trump criticizing these nations for failing to support U.S. operations and for their stance on NATO security. However, is there a deeper, more strategic reason for these troop withdrawals, a purpose that signals a major change in U.S. strategic global strategy? To answer this essential question, it is necessary to survey the broader background.
What is the meaning and purpose of U.S. military bases outside the United States? What is their historical background and strategic mission? What does it mean for the United States to withdraw troops from Europe and other regions? Finally, what are the benefits and costs of these overseas bases for the United States?
At first glance one might say that such troop withdrawals from abroad signal U.S. decline and the resulting necessitated pullback from foreign commitments as for example when the Roman Empire famously withdrew its legions from Britain in 410 or the U.K. ended its commitments east of Suez in 1971. However, the mercurial Trump seems to be doing so simply to signal his displeasure with Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz for criticizing the U.S. attack against Iran. Thus, if this is merely the case, and given the U.S. president’s notorious pattern of changing his announced policies on a dime, his supposed troop withdrawal might be mothballed next week.
On the other hand, Trump’s actions are not always so meaninglessly scatterbrained. For example, even his most vociferous critics credit him for awakening his NATO allies to their need to dramatically increase their miniscule military expenses to a heftier 5 percent. This was clearly a major geostrategic development with most important consequences. Similarly, Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Germany and possibly other locations may constitute much more than a fit of pique soon to be forgotten. Instead, Trump’s troop withdrawal may be an important part of his new National Security Strategy (NSS) to refocus U.S. priorities toward the Western Hemisphere, and reduce U.S. political, military, and financial costs to better defend the homeland, a strategy this author assessed in an earlier Atlas report just a few months ago.
Maintaining U.S. troops abroad actually dates back to the very beginnings of American independence when President Thomas Jefferson sent U.S. marines to target the Barbary pirates off the coast of North Africa in 1801. These earlier U.S. force projections abroad led to the famous line in the Marine’s hymn “To the shores of Tripoli.” The War of 1812 witnessed U.S. troops less successfully attacking British Canada, while the Mexican War in 1846-1848 did end with U.S. troops capturing Mexico City, or as the Marine hymn put it “the halls of Montezuma.” However, despite these earlier military forays abroad, President George Washington’s famous Farewell Address in 1796 warning his countrymen against foreign entanglements largely prevailed until the end of the nineteenth century when the U.S. attacked Spain.
The successful Spanish-American War led to Cuban independence as a partial U.S. client state, and the outright acquisition of Puerto Rico and the Philippines with the accompanying U.S. military base in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay still famously held by the U.S. today. At roughly the same time, the U.S. also took the Panama Canal. World War I saw the U.S. deploy over 1 million troops to Europe, action that turned the tide in favor of the Allies against Germany. However, the U.S. famously declined to enter the League of Nations and retrenched into normalcy and military non-entanglement with the war’s end.
Thus, it was World War II and the following Cold War against Communism and the Soviet Union that led to a massive and seemingly permanent U.S. military presence in Europe of more than 400,000 troops through the NATO alliance created in 1949 to contain communism. In quick succession the worldwide U.S. struggle against communism then led to the Korean War against the new communist state of China in 1950-1953 and the stationing of U.S. troops in South Korea that continues today.
A decade later the U.S. blundered into the Vietnam War which at its height in the late 1960s witnessed involvement of a half million troops in South Vietnam. More than 36,000 U.S. troops died in the Korean War, while 58,000 were killed in the Vietnam War. This left a searing memory on the U.S. conscience. Yet détente beginning in the 1960s and the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s still saw massive U.S. troop commitments abroad to deter potential adversaries, support global stability, and maintain alliances. New wars against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003, Afghanistan from 2001-2021, and now Iran in 2026 as well as the Russian war against Ukraine that began in its current stage in 2022 demanded a continuing U.S. military presence abroad. Thus, maintaining U.S. forces abroad has constituted a largely bipartisan commitment since the end of World War II to achieve forward defense, conduct counterterrorism, and secure economic interests, among other related goals such as monitoring adversaries, supporting allies by deterring threats, and enabling rapid responses to international crises.
It is difficult to conclude what it ultimately would mean for Trump to withdraw troops from Europe and other regions. In the first place, it is not clear whether his present plan to drawdown U.S. troops from Germany is really part of a larger geostrategic plan or simply a temporary flash of anger meant to somehow punish that country but soon forgotten. Second, even if Trump did not exist, the U.S. has been drawing down troops from abroad for decades since the height of their presence during the Cold War. For example, the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process is the Department of Defense’s (DOD) authorized method for reorganizing military infrastructure to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and modernize, resulting in the closure or realignment of over 350 installations across five rounds (1988, 1991, 1993, 1995, 2005). Viewed from this perspective, Trump’s modest suggestions simply continue part of a long-established pattern.
Third, even if intended as an opening step in a new U.S. national security strategy and the lessening of “forever wars,” what does the current U.S. imbroglio with Iran foretell? From the present vantage point, the Iranian situation may portend the exact opposite of U.S. troop withdrawal from abroad and even bring new, semi-permanent military commitments abroad. The DOD budget request for fiscal year 2026 was almost a staggering $1 trillion, a significant increase from previous years due to rising global tensions. The U.S. has already spent $25 billion on the Iran War, primarily for munitions and operations. U.S. bases abroad cost an estimated $55-94 billion annually. How long can such expenditures continue before economic catastrophe results? On the other hand, some host states partially do pay for the U.S. troops. Japan, for example provided $12.6 billion and South Korea $5.8 billion to support the U.S. military presence between 2016 and 2019.
Fourth, more crises abroad may suddenly arise demanding new U.S. troops abroad despite Trump’s most fervent wishes. Finally, the Trumpian era, for better or worse, has less than three more years before a new administration comes to office. Whether the next president is a Republican or Democrat, he or maybe she, will certainly want to clean up much of the mess Trump has created and seek new, hopefully more positive initiatives. Will these new policies involve U.S. troop withdrawals? Nobody really knows.
On the other hand, history teaches that no country or empire lasts forever. Who ever thought that the mighty Soviet Union would so suddenly simply disappear? This surely implies that the U.S. is not going to last forever either. Indeed, by definition, it is already progressing toward its finality. How long this will take and what modes it will entail remain to be seen, but surely the process will involve decisions on the future of troops abroad.
Michael M. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Tech University and the author of several books on the Kurds, Turkey, and Azerbaijan, among others.
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