The Ramstein Air Base in Germany
Reports concerning a possible transfer of U.S. military bases from their current location in Germany to Hungary have recently emerged in the world media. The British newspaper Daily Telegraph has reported that President Donald Trump is allegedly considering establishing a new European command in Hungary, but in our view, such a move seems to be highly unlikely.
According to the Daily Telegraph, President Donald Trump is inclined towards such a move because of his growing frustration with Europe’s unwillingness to commit to a peace process in Ukraine, as well as his complaint about some EU Member States not spending enough on defense capabilities. Although the Telegraph has offered no evidence for such a conclusion and quoted no sources, the news has now been republished by major news outlets, including ones in the U.S. Hungary Today‘s inquiries into the matter have yielded no indications either on the U.S., nor the Hungarian side that such a move could take place in the foreseeable future.
Although it is true that to date that the Hungarian government remains the only one within the European Union that shares the Trump administration’s vision of a negotiated peace-deal between Russia and Ukraine, this reason alone has little implications towards a possible mass redeployment of U.S. troops. The second reason listed, defense investment, is an unlikely ground for justifying such a move either. Although Hungary has been modernizing its defense capabilities and rebuilding its defense industry since 2017, at break-neck speed, it has been somewhat frugal in acquiring U.S.-made weapons systems, with the exception of some missiles for the Air Force and NASAMS air defense batteries. However, when the U.S. demands that its NATO allies spend more money on weapons, it very clearly does not mean any weapons, but American-manufactured ones.
Hungary’s Saab Gripen aircraft will soon need to pass on the baton to a newer generation of fighter jets. Photo: Honvedelem.hu
The Hungarian government’s decision not to seek defense-technology cooperation with the United States to the extent as, for instance Poland or Britain have, however, has its roots in politics. To put it bluntly, it did not envision sufficient guarantees from the U.S. administration that such defense cooperation that could last for decades in case of more complex weapons-systems, could proceed without undue political interference. A request for the acquisition of the U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets for the Hungarian Air force, that is now ready for a new generation of military aircraft, would have almost certainly come back from the Biden administration with a long list of strings attached concerning political and social reform that the Orbán government would have rejected flat out.
The U.S. is currently deploying some 35,000 of its troops in Germany on bases like Ramstein and almost 40 others. Although some of them are scheduled for closure, it is unthinkable that the Trump administration would even consider moving them all to Hungary, or to some other European country for that matter. In 2021, an agreement was signed designating Kecskemét and Pápa Air Force Bases as agreed facilities for the U.S. Air Force. Yet these are not permanent U.S. bases and are vital for the Hungarian defense forces for their own use. Building new infrastructure that could house tens of thousands of NATO forces would take years. Hence the question to be answered here is not whether Donald Trump would really move troops from Germany to Hungary. Instead, what is the reason behind the emergence of such news in a media outlet with a long track-record of activist-type recording about the war in Ukraine, and that of disseminating almost exclusively hostile opinions about the Orbán government.
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