Trump presidency withdraws 5,000 U.S. troops from Europe. The additional brigade deployed by Biden after the Russian invasion of Ukraine returns to the United States. The dispatch of the Cruise missile regiment ordered at the time is also revoked.

By Marco Ferrando

The dimensions of the U.S. “withdrawal” are very modest. The US contingent stationed in Europe totals 75,000 troops. The withdrawal is essentially concentrated in Germany. The German and Polish rearmament largely offsets the American withdrawal.

However, the political signal is not irrelevant. The decision to partially disengage was taken without consulting the European NATO allies. And it is combined with the still unofficial announcement that “in case of war” the United States would reduce the number of U.S. military personnel to be sent “to the relief” of Europe.

The America First line thus takes a new step forward. It is not a question of the U.S. abandonment of the old continent, the “D-Day in reverse” of which the bourgeois press speaks (La Repubblica, 21/5). But certainly the new U.S. presidency confirms its trend line. U.S. imperialism in decline finds it difficult to sustain the costs of its old world hegemony and proceeds to cut them unilaterally. Better to concentrate on the Pacific frontier, where the strategic game with Chinese imperialism is being played. On the other hand, the new US administration’s Strategy Paper singles out Russian imperialism as a “long-term adversary”, no longer as an “enemy”. And with regard to Putin, Trump has been developing a new policy for some time now. Not friendly, but one of exchange. “Russia (and China) out of Venezuela, out of Cuba, out of the American continent”, which the US president wants entirely “under the Stars and Stripes”. But full readiness to negotiate with Russia the division of Ukraine and to recognize a larger space in Europe.

The crisis of the transatlantic axis between US imperialism and European imperialism is in full swing. The U.S. polemic against the lack of European support in the war against Iran and for the unblocking of Hormuz is part of this framework. NATO as such is not under discussion today. But a profound restructuring of the Alliance is certainly underway. The famous Article 5 of the Atlantic Alliance, in its real military implications, is undergoing a progressive political hollowing out. The European imperialisms are called upon to assume a growing military commitment at the expense of their own wage earners.

German imperialism is running the European arm of the Atlantic Alliance. Germany wants to reach the target of 5% of GDP for military spending as quickly as possible. “Our goal is a new distribution of burdens within the NATO alliance, corresponding to Germany’s economic and military potential…”,this declared German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul after the announced US “withdrawal”. It is also the German challenge to the hegemonic ambitions of French imperialism in the European military field. As for Italian imperialism, its objective is to consolidate, with growing resources, the leadership of the southern branch of the alliance, that which controls the Mediterranean and North Africa.

Undoubtedly, the reformist idea of “a Europe of peace” by being “more autonomous from the United States” is the illusion that conceals an inverted reality. That of an increasingly armed capitalist Europe, which places in rearmament the hope of relaunching its negotiating weight in the new distribution of world balances. Only the struggle for a workers’ government, in each country and on a continental scale, can confront this perspective. Only a Socialist Europe can realize a real alternative.