The top American commander in Europe signaled the review in remarks to reporters on Wednesday, when he said that Mr. Austin was “in the process of conducting a very, very thorough review” of Mr. Trump’s drawdown plan.
“The new administration has comfortably stated to us that we need to conduct a thorough review, cradle to grave, in all areas,” Gen. Tod D. Wolters, the head of United States European Command and NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, said in a news conference from Mons, Belgium. After the review, he said, “we’ll go back to the drawing board.”
In announcing Mr. Trump’s plans last summer, his deputies at the Pentagon tried to portray it as a needed reshuffling. But that effort was undercut by Mr. Trump himself when he complained — at the same time his administration was announcing the withdrawal — that Germany was, in his words, “delinquent” in its military spending.
The withdrawal announcement last summer blindsided German officials and even some American military officials, who have long looked at the American troop presence in Germany as the bedrock of its commitment to NATO.
A Defense Department official said Thursday that it was unclear whether Mr. Biden adjust the troop levels in Somalia. In one of the last Pentagon-related acts in his presidency, Mr. Trump ordered the 700 American troops who were training and advising Somali counterparts in the battle against the Shabab in East Africa to leave Somalia. On Jan. 17, the Pentagon announced in a short statement that the American troop withdrawal from Somalia was complete.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/us/politics/biden-germany-troops-trump.html
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