@TomHalstead · 26 Jan 2026 · 17:20
The retrograde has started. ~38,000 personnel and families out of Germany, Italy, the UK, Spain. Largest movement out of Europe since 1990.
And it is already stuck, for a reason nobody planned: the asset freeze broke the payment chain. German suppliers cannot lawfully take US government money. Some aircraft are held because nobody can sell the Air Force jet fuel.
Europe froze the assets of a departing army and thereby prevented it from departing.
Nobody drafted that. It is the single most consequential unintended effect of the entire crisis and it came out of a payments annex.
The retrograde has started. ~38,000 personnel and families out of Germany, Italy, the UK, Spain. Largest movement out of Europe since 1990. And it is already stuck, for a reason nobody planned: the asset freeze broke the…
The largest American movement out of Europe since 1990 stops on the ramp at Ramstein. Not for politics: the asset freeze broke the payment chain, and no supplier can lawfully sell …
26 January 2026 · in the recordRutte asks for one pageThe Secretary General writes directly to the President. Not custody, not security, not a change in who holds the weapons. One page conceding that the oldest guarantee in the allian…