ATHENS — As Washington moves to reduce its military presence in Europe, the continent needs to look to Ukraine and learn from its defense-tech revolution, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on Monday.
“We must view this as a renewed call to develop and deploy our own capabilities available more quickly, there is simply no way around this,” Wadephul said in Athens, where he travelled to participate in military cooperation talks with his Greek counterparts.
“The example of Ukraine shows that military capabilities can be developed and made available much more quickly than we have practiced in Europe over the past decades,” he noted.
Wadephul is not alone in calling for further investment in the kind of cutting-edge drones developed by Ukraine. During a large military exercise in Champagne last week, French President Emmanuel Macron similarly underscored drone technology’s importance for national defense.
Drones — which as Ukraine has demonstrated, can be manufactured quickly and perform well against more expensive technology — are especially relevant as Europe seeks to rapidly bolster its defenses against Russia, with the United States pulling away.
The Pentagon last week announced that it would withdraw 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany over the next year. The news came amid an escalating clash between U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said Washington lacked a clear strategy to end its war in Iran and was being “humiliated” by Tehran.
Trump has also threatened to remove U.S. troops from Spain and Italy, whose leaders have also been critical of the war on Iran. And the U.S. president has long mulled with pulling out of NATO.
Wadephul on Monday sought to downplay the specter of large-scale withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe at of a U.S. troop withdrawal and expressed confidence in the Alliance’s conventional deterrence capability in Europe.
“I am firmly convinced that the U.S. appreciates the value and importance of NATO, including for its own security,” he said, adding that he was confident the alliance’s conventional deterrence capability would be unaffected by the changes. Trump has made numerous public statements deriding NATO.
Wadephul added Berlin was still trying to determine which decisions Washington had taken, and what leeway his country had for influencing those measures.
Germany’s foreign minister also called on Iran to negotiate and end to the war and said Tehran had a responsibility to demonstrate that it had abandoned its attempts to build a nuclear weapon. He added the country had “no justification” to block the Strait of Hormuz.
Following his meeting with his German counterpart, Greek Foreign Affairs Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis said Athens and Berlin were keen to participate in international initiatives aimed at reopening the key trading channel. The two countries, he said, would be willing to serve as a “defensive, supporting presence” in the future, “once the situation has stabilized.”
