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[FoxNews] US military footprint in Europe has been declining for decades

European leaders are grappling with how to handle icier relations with the U.S. since President Donald Trump regained control of the White House this year.

"The Europeans have a serious problem of readiness … that they’re trying to fix, but it takes time," Camille Grand, a former NATO official who is now with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said in a Washington Post report Sunday. "If Trump decides ‘I’m going to pull out U.S. troops from Germany because I’m upset with the trade imbalance,’ that’s much more complicated to manage than to say we have a plan to do this within X years."

The comments come as European leaders have become increasingly anxious about the future of the security of the continent in the second era of Trump, with the Washington Post reporting that leaders are wary that the American president is too friendly with Moscow and that they widely expect him to pull back roughly 20,000 U.S. troops that were deployed to the continent by former President Joe Biden in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"I would not be surprised if at some point [those troops] go back to their home base in America," a NATO diplomat told the outlet while noting that those troops were sent to Europe at the height of an emergency and that their exit "would be, so to speak, a return to normalcy."