The United States appears ready to pull much of its military from Europe. The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy, a key policy document, declared that it was time for the continent to “stand on its own feet” and take “primary responsibility for its own conventional defense”—or, put differently, that it needs to get ready for when Washington withdraws. At a June 2026 meeting of NATO’s defense ministers, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon was “moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe stepping up to take primary responsibility for the defense of Europe.” Two months later, in August, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby said that NATO would transition to what he called “a stronger, more equitable and sustainable alliance,” or one in which the continent would do most of the work of defending itself. The administration followed up by sending a questionnaire to all NATO allies, seeking to elicit whether they were aligned with President Donald Trump’s policies and priorities; unspoken was the clear threat that those who were not would face decreased U.S. support. Purportedly, the Pentagon is working on a study to determine the optimal level of U.S. forces in NATO, but it is clear that the study’s task is merely to provide a cover story for the course Trump, Hegseth, and Colby have already chosen.

To Trump and his officials, withdrawing from Europe makes perfect sense. The continent, they argue, is rich and powerful enough to fully defend itself. Washington, meanwhile, must spend its military resources on growing challenges in Asia and the Middle East.

But the administration’s logic is incorrect. Pulling back from Europe will not advance Washington’s interests in any part of the world. Quite the contrary: it will weaken not only NATO but all of the United States’ partnerships. It could even threaten the American homeland. The administration’s planned pullback is not motivated by any meaningful appreciation for alliance management, threat analysis, or historical understanding. Instead, it is the product of sheer bias against Europe, which makes it as damning as it is dangerous.

MAKING THE WORLD UNSAFE FOR DEMOCRACY

When Trump returned to the White House, many European officials hoped that the president’s bark would continue to be worse than his bite, as it was during his first term. But it soon became apparent that Trump was actually going to follow through on his pledge to pull away from the continent. In October 2025, the administration announced that it was permanently removing roughly 1,000 troops from Romania, downsizing its presence on NATO’s eastern flank. In May 2026, his team canceled the deployment to Europe of an army task force equipped with the new Dark Eagle hypersonic weapons system, which would have threatened important military targets in Russia and thus strengthened deterrence. Also in May, the Trump administration canceled the deployment of the Second Armored Brigade Combat Team, which was supposed to replace an existing U.S. unit, leaving the continent with roughly 5,000 fewer troops.

According to June 2026 reporting by The New York Times, the Pentagon’s policy office has told U.S. allies that deeper cuts are coming. Washington plans to slash the number of U.S. Air Force F-15E and F-16 fighter jets stationed in Europe by a third, remove all eight aerial refueling tankers operating there, reassign one of the two bomber plane groups assigned to Europe, withdraw 15 of the 26 maritime patrol aircraft stationed on the continent, and pull back a cruise-missile-firing submarine and an........

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