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U.S. Army in Europe to Get German Chief of StaffAppointment Is Rare Sign of Cooperation Following Recent Spying AllegationsBy Andrea Thomas
July 31, 2014 11:14 a.m. ETA German will for the first time become chief of staff of the U.S. Army in Europe, in a rare sign of cooperation since allegations of U.S. spying caused a chill in the German-U.S. relationship.
Brig. Gen. Markus Laubenthal from Germany's Bundeswehr will report to Lt. General Donald Campbell, the U.S. commander for U.S. Army Europe, known as USAREUR, with headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany.
"This is a bold and major step forward in USAREUR's commitment to operating in a multinational environment with our German allies," U.S. Army Europe Gen. Campbell said in a statement.
The first appointment of a German to this position has been several months in the making and is part of the U.S. Army's strategy to internationalize the command of its overseas operations.
The U.S. Army in Europe said in March it was in talks to appoint a German brigadier general as its new chief of staff.
Still, German officials said the decision—less than a month after Berlin asked the top U.S. intelligence official here to leave Germany following the arrest of a suspected U.S. spy in the ranks of the German intelligence service—showed the two countries were cooperating as closely as ever on other fronts.
"It's a sign of the continuing, very deep cooperation with the Americans," Lt. Gen. Rainer Korff, the commander of German contingents in multinational forces, told The Wall Street Journal. "We didn't even have this in the dark times of the Cold War."
He said relations between the U.S. and the German armies haven't been damaged by allegations in the past year about widespread U.S. spying and electronic surveillance.
Gen. Laubenthal said he views his new duties with "interest and respect…. I am sure that I can use the experience I gained in the German Army supporting the training of ready army forces, in my new position."
Revelations about the National Security Agency's widespread data-collection operations in Germany last year caused outrage in Germany, which has very strong privacy protection laws conditioned by its traumatic experience of mass state surveillance under the Nazi and Communist regimes.
U.S.-German relations took a steep dive earlier this month, when the government asked the Central Intelligence Agency's chief of station at the U.S. embassy to leave Germany, following the arrest of a German intelligence worker under suspicion of selling information to U.S. spies.
Despite the uproar, however, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have repeatedly said that Germany needed to work with the U.S.
U.S. Army Europe, which trains and leads army forces, has about 30,000 U.S. soldiers at garrisons in Belgium, the Netherlands, German and Italy.
Before his appointment, Mr. Laubenthal has served as the commander of the 12th Armored Brigade in Amberg, Germany, and the chief of staff for ISAF Regional Command North in Afghanistan.
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