I'm John Batchler. Conversation with Judy Dempsey of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

reflecting on her time at the Financial Times covering NATO once upon a time,

and how at that point there was much alarm U.S. talking about withdrawing troops from NATO from Europe.

Here it is again. Judy, however, points to another factor in this exchange, which is the lack of certainty. Here Judy explains. More of this tonight.

This element of the United States withdrawing troops or reducing the number of troops from Europe, this is an old debate. And I remember it was brought

up 2002, 2003, when I was based in Brussels covering NATO for the Financial Times. And I said,

I wrote this exact article saying, oh, the Americans are considering reducing the troops.

And of course, the Americans denied it. Well, they did

reduce the troops. There are other priorities. But in this case, we simply don't know anymore.

Okay, the Americans say they're going to reduce 5,000 troops from Germany. It's not a huge amount.

They're going to keep Ramstein. They need Ramstein for the base, for Africa, for the Middle East. It's a huge, huge amount. They're going to keep Ramstein. They need Ramstein for the base for

Africa, for the Middle East. It's a huge, huge American center, which is crucial for

European security, but more particularly for American security. But the point is that the

administration mentions this and the polls get very upset, nobody's informed,

the NATO members written informed, and heaven's next day, oh no, then maybe, you know, we will

increase the deployments in Poland or maybe in the Baltic states. So essentially, there's

confusion. There's no certainty.