Hegseth announces review of US forces in Europe, rips NATO allies

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday ripped into NATO allies while announcing a new six-month review of U.S. troop deployments in Europe, accusing the alliance of being a “paper tiger.”

Hegseth told defense ministers at the NATO headquarters in Brussels that the review will ensure the alliance moves “fast and irreversibly toward Europe leading,” though he did not say if it will result in a drawdown of U.S. deployments to the continent. He said NATO allies “must step up.”

“President Trump has been very clear on this point for many years and over two administrations,” Hegseth said. “And for too long, NATO has been a paper tiger and a one-way street. No more.”

He urged the alliance to become a “NATO 3.0 modeled on the NATO 1.0 that won the Cold War,” adding that NATO’s framers, including former President Eisenhower, “always expected” Europe to take the lead. Hegseth claimed that under NATO 2.0, it drifted to focusing on “gender equity and climate change and defense austerity.”

“NATO lost its way,” he continued. “NATO 2.0 was an era of distraction, deindustrialization and demilitarization. It was an era of free riding, and those were lost years........

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