At a branch conference in the Saxon town of Löbau last weekend, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) co-leader Tino Chrupalla delivered a blunt strategic declaration: “Let us begin to put it into practice: with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Germany.”
Roughly 38,000 American troops occupy German territory at major installations including Ramstein Air Base, Patch Barracks, and the Grafenwöhr training area.
Tino Chrupalla framed the demand as a step toward German sovereignty and as the party’s operational programme for gaining federal power by 2029, stating that Germany “cannot act as a sovereign country while dependent on U.S. military presence.”
Tino Chrupalla drew pointed admiration from Spain’s stance on the Iran war, telling delegates with evident enthusiasm: “Dear friends, ships under Spanish flag are allowed to pass the Strait. Why are the Spaniards allowed to cross? Because Spain has closed its bases for the Iran war. And that is totally right. Spain does not get involved in this war.”
The AfD’s stated philosophy extended to an expansive renunciation of overseas adventurism: “We are against interfering in the internal affairs of other countries because we can see what comes of it: Death, destruction, expensive energy, refugees.”
Germany’s established parties swiftly rejected the demand, reaffirming NATO commitments. A Sunday poll placed the AfD and Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union tied at 26 per cent each – a measure of how durable the AfD’s electoral standing has grown.
Switzerland’s Tomahawk Dispute: Trust Measured in Cash
Tino Chrupalla’s declaration lands in a Europe growing sceptical of Washington as a reliable arms supplier.
Switzerland’s procurement saga offers the most vivid example: Bern ordered Tomahawk cruise missiles years ago, Washington declared it unable to deliver them, and Switzerland suspended advance payments for Patriot air-defence batteries – after which the United States diverted Swiss funds deposited for F-35 fighters to cover Patriot programme shortfalls. Swiss armaments chief Urs
Loher described the outcome as “very unsatisfactory,” with the diverted amount running to a “low three-digit million” Swiss franc sum. Swiss senator Werner Salzmann expressed frustration that Washington’s ease in bypassing the payment freeze had “negatively affected trust in US commitments.”
Washington’s supply failures trace directly to the Iran war’s consumption rate: the United States has fired over 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles in four weeks of combat, burning through stocks at a pace that has alarmed Pentagon planners.
Annual American production stands at roughly 90 to 100 missiles, making replenishment a years-long undertaking.
University of Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis captured European sentiment sharply: “Trust in the United States, you say?” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that on American weapons, “the United States will always come first” – a statement that European procurement ministries received with visible frustration.
Germany Eyes Australia’s Ghost Bat Drone
The purchasing choices of the German defence ministry carry a message of equal weight to Tino Chrupalla’s, delivered through institutional channels.
Last week, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius visited Queensland’s Amberley Royal Australian Air Force Base and told reporters that Boeing Australia’s MQ-28A Ghost Bat Collaborative Combat Aircraft was a “serious competitor” in the Luftwaffe‘s autonomous fleet selection.Â
Germany plans to field hundreds of unmanned fighter jets by 2029 – the same target year Tino Chrupalla named for the AfD’s federal power bid.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst Malcolm Davis described the Ghost Bat as embodying a new combat paradigm: “This is a new type of approach to air power where you have a crewed fighter giving directions to four or five Ghost Bats flying in formation with it.”
The Ghost Bat carries a procurement advantage over US-origin competing options, falling outside the stringent American defence-export regulations that typically accompany American platforms – regulations that increasingly carry political weight in Berlin.
Australian sources said Canberra would consider technology-transfer agreements allowing Ghost Bat production in Europe, giving Berlin a measure of industrial autonomy over its future air-combat capability.Â
Boris Pistorius promoted a flexible, step-by-step purchasing process over traditional long-term contracts, a departure that reads, in the present European climate, as a deliberate retreat from American supply-chain dependency.
AfD’s MAGA Courtship: An Affair Gone Cold
The AfD’s cooling toward Washington combines electoral calculation with what Foreign Policy has called a genuine ideological rupture over the Iran war.
A survey placed the share of Germans who consider the United States a trustworthy partner at a record-low 15 per cent, with over three-quarters of Germans reported as feeling threatened by the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.Â
Alice Weidel instructed senior party figures to reduce high-profile visits to Washington – a pointed instruction from the same leader whom U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance had met publicly in early 2025.
Tino Chrupalla went further in a television interview, accusing the Americans of committing “war crimes” in Iran, citing alleged strikes on civilian infrastructure. The AfD’s reservations about the Trump administration predated the Iran war: Alice Weidel had branded Trump’s Greenland threats as “Wild West methods.”
In France, National Rally leader Jordan Bardella accused the American president of “imperial ambitions,” with Marine Le Pen invoking state sovereignty as “non-negotiable” over Venezuela.
European sovereigntist parties, across geographic and ideological divides, are telling Washington that European security decisions require European leadership.
The AfD’s break from MAGA reads, at its core, as a rational response to electoral arithmetic and geopolitical reality. A Germany preparing five state elections this year, with the AfD polling at around 39 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt, has every incentive to speak the language of sovereignty.
The Ghost Bat evaluation, Switzerland’s procurement friction with Washington, and Tino Chrupalla’s Löbau declaration all feed the same European conclusion: the era of uncritical US military and arms dependency has generated unreliable supplies, expensive energy through regional wars, and accumulated political friction.
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