NATO is preparing to begin a partial American withdrawal from the collective defence of Europe.

In the coming weeks, the Pentagon will present concrete plans for NATO in Brussels. The United States will then outline which military capabilities Washington intends to reduce.

“These changes will be incorporated into our troop and capability offering at the next NATO force generation conference.

We want to provide the Allies with the necessary information and clarity to advance the transition to a European defence in which the Allies assume primary responsibility for the conventional defence of Europe as quickly and efficiently as possible,” a senior representative of the US Department of Defense confirmed to Die Welt.

US President Donald Trump began by making demands of the European NATO countries shortly after moving into the White House in January 2025. He and several other Americans have grown tired of an alliance in which the United States must bear most of the costs.

Following the war with Iran, during which no European country showed any willingness to contribute support, while NATO members such as Spain attempted to sabotage the American military operation, Trump and his team have probably had enough.

The Pentagon’s primary focus is China and the Indo-Pacific region, and both the Pentagon and the White House realise that the United States can no longer fight on multiple fronts simultaneously as the only major military power.

Europe must therefore fend for itself, which is ill-suited to a continent that is in conflict with Russia and is allowing itself to be invaded by immigrants who threaten Western Europe in particular from within.

The fifth column is thus already in place by invitation, and the European countries have almost no military capability to show for themselves after more than 30 years of cutbacks.

Europe Under Time Pressure

European NATO countries have long known that the United States intends to withdraw, but they assumed that this step would be gradual and coordinated. With the now-confirmed proposal, Washington is giving Europeans no significant transition period.

This is a major problem, because although rearmament is under way and most European countries have increased their defence budgets, this will not have any significant effect on military capability for at least ten years.

In particular, the reductions that Washington has pressed for primarily concern NATO’s Force Model (NFM), the Alliance’s rapid reaction force system. It determines how many troops can be deployed to frontline positions as reinforcements within ten days, how many can be deployed within ten to thirty days, and how many soldiers can be mobilised within six months – up to 800,000.

The capabilities include strategic bombers, long-range precision strike capabilities, naval assets, and aerial refuelling aircraft.

At a NATO meeting in Brussels last week, an American defence policy adviser informed the Allies that the Trump administration intends to reduce the number of US fighter aircraft in Europe by one third.

NATO’s security guarantee, under which an attack on one member of the Alliance is regarded as an attack on all and triggers a collective response, is at risk, writes Die Welt.

This will be felt particularly acutely in the Baltic states, which were annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and governed from the Kremlin until the collapse of the Union in 1991. Norway may also be affected, but we may be spared because of our strategic importance to the United States.

According to information obtained by Die Welt, doubts already exist within the US Army in Europe as to whether NATO possesses sufficient forces and capabilities fully to implement its regional defence plans.

This could open the door to Russian advances, and the Baltic countries – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – probably have the greatest reason to fear such a development.

Personally, I do not believe that an attack on NATO countries is particularly likely. Putin wants a security buffer around Russia and surely knows that the country he governs does not have the capacity to fight NATO if the United States contributes. A nuclear war is not a solution that would save Russia; quite the contrary.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his speech upon first being inaugurated as President in 1933: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”