WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) – Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday told reporters that a U.S. troop deployment to Poland had been delayed, but added it was not accurate to say that the troops were being withdrawn from Europe.
Vance, at a White House briefing, said the United States wants to encourage Europe to “take more ownership” of the common defense.
“We’re not talking about pulling every single American troop out of Europe. We’re talking about shifting some resources around in a way that maximizes American security. I don’t think that’s bad for Europe,” he said.
The U.S. has been reviewing its troop presence in Europe and has long been expected to scale it back following demands from Trump that NATO take a larger role in the defense of Europe. The Pentagon has not yet detailed how it envisions future troop laydowns across the continent.
“We’ve not reduced the troop levels in Poland by 4000 troops. What we did is that we delayed a troop deployment that was going to go to Poland, that’s not a reduction, that’s just a standard delay in rotation that sometimes happens in these situations,” Vance said.
Reports about the change in the deployment of 4,000 troops to Poland has drawn sharp criticism from U.S. lawmakers concerned about the potential for Trump to abandon its allies.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Steve Holland;Editing by David Ljunggren and Chizu Nomiyama)
