In the face of a "global force posture review" by the Trump administration and a potential shakeup of the military's combatant commands, both House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) today urged the United States to maintain its current force posture in Europe.
Rogers, in his opening statement at a committee hearing Tuesday, emphasized the U.S. cannot allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to drag out potential peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine -- the desired solution by President Trump to bring the three-year conflict to an end.
“The reality is, Russia maintains the world’s largest and most diverse nuclear arsenal. And despite suffering massive losses in Ukraine, the Russian Army is now larger than it was before the war,” Rogers said.
The chairman added Russia’s military is “reconstituting faster than expected,” and the industrial base is being supported by China, North Korea and Iran.
“Given these threats, I’m concerned by reports that some at DOD are considering not only giving up NATO command, but also significantly reducing our posture in Europe. I’m especially concerned that Congress has not been consulted,” he said.
Rogers went on to say that “pulling back prematurely would risk inviting further Russian aggression -- potentially even against NATO.”
“That’s why I strongly support maintaining the current U.S. force posture in Europe at this time,” he said.
Smith, following Rogers’ statement, emphasized that the U.S. must find an end to the war, but it should not be done by “undermining support for Ukraine and praising Putin and Russia.”
Smith urged the U.S. must stand up for its European allies to deter Putin, stop the war and “protect economic and political freedom as we have done for a very long time.”
“I think we made it very clear how we feel about this,” Rogers then said following Smith’s remarks.
CNN reported on March 19 that the Pentagon was considering a consolidation of combatant commands, with the possibility of merging U.S. European and U.S. Africa commands into one command based in Germany. However, in the weeks since that report, DOD officials have not given clear answers on what that would look like.
When Rogers asked Katherine Thompson, who is performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, whether the U.S. should maintain its current posture in Europe for the foreseeable future, she answered the Pentagon is “undergoing a global force posture review.”
“And so, we are taking into account, not only the dynamics in EUCOM, but in all of our theaters and evaluating that based on President Trump’s stated interests and upsizing our force and our resources appropriately to that,” she said.
No decisions have been made yet as part of the review, she added.
Rogers then responded by saying he and Smith had made it “very clear” in previous correspondence that DOD should maintain its surge posture in Europe “for the foreseeable future.”
Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of EUCOM, testified Tuesday that the command currently has 80,000 service members throughout Europe, which is down from the 105,000 that were postured in the theater at the start of the war in 2022. The 80,000 figure represents about 20% of U.S. forces that had been stationed in Europe during the Cold War to deter the Soviet Union at the time, he added.
“Russia continues to reconstitute its conventional forces, and possesses advantages in geography, domain, and readiness. A conventional fight with Russia will be decided on land, and it would likely begin with a comparatively large Russian force positioned on a NATO border in order to negate traditional U.S. and NATO advantages in, and preferences for, long-range, standoff warfare. Therefore, NATO, including U.S. EUCOM, must be postured to blunt Russia’s ability to rapidly mass numerically superior land forces,” he said.
