Tino Chrupalla, co-leader of Germany's far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), called Saturday for the complete withdrawal of all 40,000 American troops stationed in Germany—a move that would upend NATO's eastern flank defense architecture and alarm allies from Warsaw to Vilnius.
Speaking at an AfD party congress in Saxony, Chrupalla declared that Berlin must pursue an independent foreign policy by 2029, when the party aims to win the chancellorship. "Let's start implementing this," he said, citing Spain as a model after Madrid restricted US military operations from Spanish bases.
Brussels decides more than you think—but on this, Berlin still matters. The American troop presence in Germany is the largest in Europe, concentrated in Ramstein Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate, which serves as the logistical hub for US operations across three continents. Those 40,000 troops are not symbolic. They are the backbone of NATO's collective defense against Russia, and their withdrawal would fundamentally alter the security guarantee that has underpinned European stability since 1949.
This is not idle talk. AfD just recorded its strongest-ever result in a western German state, winning 19.5% in Rhineland-Palatinate—the very state that hosts Ramstein. The party's Saxony branch has been classified as right-wing extremist by German domestic intelligence, yet Chrupalla speaks with the confidence of someone who believes he could be in government within four years.
The AfD's official platform calls for withdrawal of all allied troops and nuclear weapons from German soil—a position that would delight Moscow and terrify . , the , and have spent the past decade building their security strategies on the assumption that anchors the transatlantic alliance. An AfD government reversing that would leave them strategically exposed.
