President Donald Trump plans to pull about 20,000 U.S. troops from Europe, according to a leading Italian news agency.

A European diplomatic source told ANSA that Trump, who entered office on Monday for a second term, wants to reduce the American contingent in Europe by about 20 percent and plans to ask for a “financial contribution” for the maintenance of the remaining troops.

  • Kissaki@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    Asia has a Chinese Taiwan threat. It’s a very different situation to Europe.

    What do you want to happen or change in Asia? Removing troops from where and to what degree?

      • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I hate to be the “ra ra america” guy here, but you know that any country we have a base in can throw us out, right? Our base leases can all be terminated by the host country pretty much whenever they want, and we’ll leave (with oh, just one or two historical exceptions, but what’s a little bribery of corrupt puppet regimes between allies?). This even happens sometimes, too - it’s partially why we withdrew from Afghanistan.

          • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            I know it goes against the narrative, but like, yeah, we do. There’s plenty of examples of this, even in the modern era, and you can find them pretty easily when you look into this topic. Honestly the thing that’s weird even for me, an american: we use withdrawing one of our bases from a country as a threat when we’re negotiating. A really really effective one, too. It turns out that, while having a concentration of spunky 18 year old boys with lil’ matching outfits is very obnoxious for those living near them, governments the world over see way more to gain from having us there than from asking us to leave.

            It seems fair to admit this is, you know, partially because when this happens we go to their neighbors who they’ve hated for the last five-hundred-or-so-years and then ask if they would be willing to host a US base (usually in deal that’s suspiciously favorable to them, too…). Mostly though, it’s because we pay fucking stupid amounts of money in leases (and bribes, obvs) to let us stay there.

            • BrainInABox
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              6 hours ago

              There’s plenty of examples of this

              No, there really isn’t. More examples of you not leaving when asked.