U.S. soldiers prepare to travel in support of a deployment to Poland on March 18, 2026. A Pentagon official last week notified NATO allies of plans to shrink the pool of military assets and capabilities the U.S. would make available to the alliance in a conflict. (Chase Murray/U.S. Army)
The U.S. is dramatically downsizing the contribution of forces it would send to Europe in a crisis, part of a larger push for other NATO members to take a larger role in defending the continent, according to a media report citing current and former officials.
During a closed-door meeting at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels last week, Pentagon official Alexander Velez-Green notified NATO allies of plans to shrink the pool of military assets and capabilities the U.S. would make available to NATO in a conflict, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Current and former officials briefed on the meeting told the newspaper that the Trump administration aims to cut the forces earmarked to defend NATO by one-third to one-half. That includes cuts to U.S. commitments of long-range strike forces, such as strategic bombers, as well as some midair refueling tankers and warships.
The move affects the NATO force model, a system used to generate and assign forces from the alliance’s member states for various defense plans, part of which involves resources from the continental United States to be made available in the event of a major crisis within the first 10 days, 30 days and 180 days.
The long-anticipated cuts by the Trump administration are aimed at prodding NATO allies to carry more of the load of defending Europe as the U.S. adjusts its force posture to deter China in the Pacific.
The move comes as President Donald Trump is expected to attend a NATO leaders summit in Ankara, Turkey, in July, and will likely pressure other allied leaders to do more to defend Europe, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Pentagon confirmed in an emailed statement to Stars and Stripes that the Department of Defense had announced changes to its contribution at the meeting, citing Trump’s longstanding push for European allies to do more.
“These changes represent an opportunity for allies to demonstrate that they have heard President Trump’s call for them to step up and take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in the statement.
At a news conference ahead of the Brussels meeting, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said a smaller U.S. contribution to the force-generating system was “to be expected.”
“This is why Europe is spending so much more to basically end the overreliance on one ally when it comes to defense of the totality of NATO,” Rutte said, citing increases in spending, capabilities and investments in the defense industrial base in both Europe and Canada.
Parnell’s statement stressed that the issue is not just about increased defense spending, but spending focused on the “combat-credible capabilities most required for Europe’s defense.”
It also follows recent Pentagon decisions to scale back the U.S. military presence in Europe, including the cancellation earlier this month of an armored brigade’s deployment to Poland — part of an effort to cut U.S. troops on the continent by 5,000. Another unit affected was a long-range fires battalion slated to deploy to Germany later this year.
Though Trump has long called for NATO allies to share more of the burden of Europe’s defense, the cuts were seen as a reprisal for a lack of NATO support for the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — and, in particular, for pointed comments by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by Iranian forces.
Some U.S. lawmakers and others have expressed concern over the scale and pace of the drawdown of U.S. forces, especially amid a continuing threat from Russian forces on Europe’s eastern front.
U.S. European Command’s Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s supreme allied commander, said last week during a news conference in Brussels that there were no immediate plans to further reduce U.S. troop levels in Europe. However, he said more cuts could come in the long term as allies strengthen their own capabilities.
There are about 80,000 U.S. troops spread across several countries on the continent.
The cuts to the NATO force model should not be confused with cuts to the U.S. force presence in Europe, said Oana Longescu, a former NATO spokesperson, noting that the force model includes assets and troops not currently in Europe.
In a series of posts on X, Longescu said that in many cases European member states could fill the gaps in the force model, but they have to assign more of their forces and capabilities to it, “not just rely on the U.S. for the brunt of it all.”
While the details of the changes have not been made public, Longescu said they’re likely to be “much more significant when it comes to burden shifting within NATO for the defense of Europe than the deployment or rotation of a few thousand troops.”
