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The 10 Countries With the Most American Troops |
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The Defense Manpower Data Center counts every American in uniform, country by country. Japan tops the table with 53,912. Eighty-one years after the surrender, the three nations that lost the Second World War hold three of the four largest American garrisons on Earth. Cuba makes the top ten. |
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Source: US Defense Manpower Data Center. Active-duty personnel permanently assigned by country, June 2025. US-wide totals as of March 2026. |
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| What's Surprising |
Japan has 53,912 American troops. Germany has 35,989. Italy has 12,571. All three fought the United States as Axis powers and lost. Eighty-one years later they hold three of the four largest US garrisons abroad, and Japan and Germany between them account for more than half of every American serviceman stationed outside the United States. The fourth is South Korea, where the fighting stopped in 1953 without a peace treaty.
Cuba is tenth, with 571. Washington has embargoed the island since 1962 and still runs a naval station at Guantánamo Bay on a lease signed in 1903. The rent is about $4,000 a year. Havana has refused to take it since 1959. The station has been in American hands since 1903, through two world wars, a revolution and a missile crisis. Cuba holds more permanently assigned American troops than Poland, which holds 342.
Two of these numbers need an asterisk. Seoul's own defense ministry put US Forces Korea at 28,500 in March 2026. The DMDC counts 23,766, because it counts soldiers permanently assigned and not units rotating through. Poland shows 342 for the same reason and hosts 8,000 to 10,000 on rotation. The permanent-assignment rule is why this map still looks like 1955.
| What's Not Surprising |
The list is a treaty map. Japan, Germany, South Korea, Italy and the United Kingdom all host American forces under agreements written in the decade after 1945 or the decade after 1950. The four countries below them are hardware. Rota in Spain. The Fifth Fleet at Bahrain. Incirlik in Türkiye. NATO's headquarters in Belgium. Nothing in Africa. Nothing in South America. Nothing in the Indo-Pacific beyond Japan and South Korea. Guam holds about 6,900 American troops and does not appear here, because Guam is American soil.
The totals are a fraction of what they were. Germany held about 248,000 American troops before the post-Cold War drawdown and holds roughly a seventh of that now. Across some 80 countries the United States runs about 750 bases and installations. Even so, only 174,400 of its 1.35 million active-duty troops were abroad in March 2026. Roughly one in eight.
The numbers move with the politics. The Pentagon ordered 5,000 troops out of Germany on May 1, days after Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized Washington's handling of the Iran war. Three weeks later Donald Trump announced 5,000 for Poland, and said Germany's total could come down a lot further. The garrison map is a diplomatic instrument.
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3 of the top 4 Japan, Germany and Italy. The three countries that lost the Second World War hold three of the four biggest American garrisons on Earth. |
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571 American troops permanently assigned in Cuba, at Guantánamo Bay. Poland, on NATO's eastern flank, has 342. |
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174,400 American troops stationed abroad in March 2026, out of 1.35 million on active duty. Roughly one in eight. |
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5,000 Troops the Pentagon ordered out of Germany on May 1, 2026. Three weeks later Washington promised 5,000 to Poland. |
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10,501 Ranks six through ten added together: Spain, Bahrain, Türkiye, Belgium and Cuba. Britain alone has 10,071. |
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The DMDC refreshes its country table every quarter, and the next one is the first that can show the Germany cut. Three things to track. Whether those 5,000 come off Germany's line or reappear on Poland's. Whether a lot further becomes another order. And whether the Pentagon releases the Global Posture Review it withheld this year, the document that would say where the map is going next. We'll be watching. |
