WEST POINT, New York--President Donald Trump, facing criticism in recent days for plans to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Germany, told West Point's graduating class on Saturday that their job will be to defend “America’s vital interests” and not fight “endless wars” in faraway lands.
Trump’s reported plans to withdraw 9,500 troops from Germany, one of America's strongest allies, and relocate them to Poland and elsewhere has drawn the ire of German officials and raised concerns in the U.S. Congress about a retreat from the world stage.
In his commencement address to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Trump told more than 1,000 graduating cadets, arrayed in a social-distancing pattern, that the job of the American soldier is not to rebuild foreign nations but "defend, and defend strongly, our nation from foreign enemies.”
“We are ending the era of endless wars," Trump said. It is not the job of American forces “to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of," he said.
As president, Trump has pulled troops from Syria and pushed U.S. allies worldwide to pay more for the commitment of American forces to defend them. In relatively rare criticism from his own party, 22 Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee wrote to Trump saying a troop cut in Germany would hurt national security and could encourage Russian aggression.
