Top US General in Europe Says Current Troop Levels Should Be Maintained

Cavoli said that the US presence in Europe hovered around 80,000 troops, a historic low, and that those numbers should be maintained.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (R) greets Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Christopher Cavoli (L) as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (C) looks on before the start of the North Atlantic Council meeting of Defence Ministers in Brussels, Belgium, on Feb. 13, 2025. Omar Havana/Getty Images

The United States’ top general in Europe is advising that the nation maintain its current troop levels across the continent.

Gen. Christopher Cavoli, who leads U.S. European Command, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on April 8 that the nation should maintain its current presence in Europe as the Pentagon seeks to change its global footprint under President Donald Trump.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has told European colleagues that they should not assume that the U.S. military presence there will last forever, as the United States works to focus more attention on countering China in the Indo-Pacific.

To that end, Cavoli said that the U.S. military currently has about 80,000 troops in Europe, down from a little more than 100,000 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and that he recommended against bringing troop levels down further.

“It’s my advice to maintain that force posture as it is now,” Cavoli said.

“I have consistently recommended throughout that period to maintain the forces we surged forward, and I would continue to do so if asked.”

The U.S. troop presence in Europe is already at a historic low for the post-World War II era.

In the 1950s, ‘60s, and ’70s, for example, the average number of American troops deployed to Europe ranged from about 290,000 to just under 350,000, according to data compiled by the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank.

At the same time, the number of U.S. troops deployed to Asia has begun to tick up as the United States seeks to continue its pivot toward deterring a potential conflict with communist China.

As such, the nation’s European allies have begun to express concern that the United States is backing away from its commitment to the NATO alliance as well as its historic Cold War role as a defender of Europe from Russian aggression.

Those concerns have only deepened following a series of remarks made by Trump last month in which he suggested that the United States would not defend its treaty allies if they spent too little on defense.

“If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them. No, I’m not going to defend them,” Trump told reporters at the White House on March 6.

European powers have moved to assume more responsibility for the continent’s defense in preparation for a decreased U.S. presence, but it is unclear how European powers could ever buck their reliance on the U.S. military or U.S.-made arms.

Germany has announced a new permanent deployment to Lithuania, and NATO leadership announced last year that a new military command would be established in Germany and led by a three-star NATO officer from a European nation to train and equip Ukrainian troops without U.S. assistance.

When asked if there were any plans to move forces away from NATO’s eastern flank, Cavoli said that troops frequently moved around but that he intended to keep roughly the same force posture until directed otherwise.

“The principal locations where we have forces right now, that’s where they are, and that’s where I’m planning to keep them,” he said.

Republican and Democrat lawmakers suggested at the hearing that it would be a mistake to remove troops from Europe outright, but what ultimately becomes of the United States’ presence in Europe will be decided in the coming months and years by Hegseth and Trump.

Katherine Thompson, who is currently performing the duties of assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told lawmakers at the hearing that a global force posture review was ongoing and that its results would be based on “Trump’s stated interests.”

Reuters contributed to this report.