Why Are American Troops Still Guarding Europe?
The United States keeps roughly 100,000 service members in Europe, yet Germany, France, and Italy spend far below the 2 percent of GDP target NATO set in 2014. That mismatch forces American taxpayers to subsidize the defense of wealthy allies while our own veterans face backlogs at VA hospitals.
Memorial Day is behind us, and Congress is back from recess. The first question every defense appropriator should answer is simple. Why does the Pentagon still treat Europe as an American protectorate? NATO was founded in 1949 to keep Stalin's tanks west of the Elbe. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The Russian military has since bled itself white in Ukraine. And still, Washington stations more troops in Germany alone than in most American states combined.
The Congressional Budget Office projects defense spending above $850 billion for fiscal year 2025. That is a staggering sum. It buys carriers, bombers, bases, and bandwidth. But it also buys a security blanket for allies who have grown accustomed to hiding underneath it. Germany finally reached 2 percent of GDP in 2024 only because Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government declared a special fund after the invasion of Ukraine. France and Italy remain below the mark. Their failure is not an accident. It is a policy choice they make because they know the American taxpayer will cover the gap.
That choice has consequences. Every brigade in Poland or tank depot in Bavaria represents a commitment that could be deterring aggression in the Indo-Pacific or securing our own southern border. Americans are not isolationists. They are realists. They see billions flowing overseas while the VA tells veterans to wait months for mental-health appointments.
What Does This Cost Veterans at Home?
Every dollar sent to defend borders in Eastern Europe is a dollar that does not hire VA psychiatrists, process disability claims, or house homeless veterans. The Department of Veterans Affairs reported 6,392 veteran suicides in 2021, or roughly 17 deaths every day, a toll that should shame every free-riding ally.
The VA's most recent suicide-prevention report runs hundreds of pages. The number that matters is 17. That is how many former service members die by suicide each day. Behind each number is a family, a unit, a community. Many of these men and women waited too long for care. The VA itself acknowledges that wait times for mental-health intake remain stubbornly high in some regions. The system is not broken because VA employees do not care. It is broken because Congress funds foreign priorities first and domestic promises second.
Backlogs for disability claims tell the same story. The Veterans Benefits Administration processed more than 1.7 million claims in fiscal 2024, yet tens of thousands of veterans still wait more than 125 days for a decision. Some are homeless while they wait. Others lose jobs. Still others sink into despair. These are not abstract statistics. They are the price of a defense posture that treats American soldiers as a global rental service.
The Pentagon budget is not a jobs program for allied capitals. It is supposed to provide for the common defense of the United States. When bases in Germany get new barracks while veterans in Arizona sleep in cars, the national interest has been inverted. The commander in chief takes an oath to the Constitution, not to the European Union.
What Should Washington Do Instead?
Congress should freeze new troop deployments to Europe, demand that NATO members meet their 2 percent pledge before any American brigade returns, and redirect savings into veteran suicide prevention and claims modernization. The Constitution tasks the federal government with defending Americans, not underwriting the social programs of wealthy foreign capitals.
The first step is honest accounting. Lawmakers should publish the annual cost of every Army division, Air Force squadron, and Navy destroyer stationed in Europe. Let taxpayers see the bill. Then require the State Department and the Pentagon to certify that each host nation is meeting the 2 percent standard before any rotational deployment is approved. Free riders should lose their seat at the table.
Second, Washington should tie alliance commitments to domestic readiness. For every dollar saved by drawing down the European footprint, half should go to the VA and half to the Indo-Pacific deterrent. The Marines need long-range missiles in Okinawa far more than Bavaria needs another commissary.
Third, Congress must stop using supplemental spending bills to hide the true cost of overseas commitments. The Ukraine supplemental alone added tens of billions in emergency appropriations, many of which bypassed the regular defense budget. That kind of accounting gimmick lets politicians promise both guns and butter without ever saying no to either. Veterans deserve a Congress that can say no.
The Populist Case for an America-First Defense
Memorial Day has passed, but the obligation to those who wore the uniform endures. Politicians who speak of honor while shipping troops abroad to protect allies who refuse to protect themselves insult the memory of every American buried under a flag-draped casket.
Populist foreign policy is not isolationism. It is the simple idea that American sons and daughters should not be the first to bleed for borders that wealthy Europeans refuse to defend themselves. The United States should remain the arsenal of democracy. It should not remain the janitor of Europe.
American veterans pledged their lives to this country. They did not pledge to pay for Germany's welfare state or France's early-retirement schemes. It is time to bring them home, fund their care, and let Europe grow up. The Alamo Post was founded this year to say what too many politicians fear: America first is not a slogan. It is a duty.
