Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) – A senior Pentagon official pressed NATO allies Thursday to explain how they were stepping up to meet US demands to take responsibility for Europe’s defence as Washington reviews its forces on the continent. President Donald Trump’s administration has raised fears among allies that it could cut back its forces in Europe after launching a six-month review in July of its deployments.
“The spirit that we come in is obviously one…of consultation, of engagement. We want to hear from our allies,” US Defense Under Secretary Elbridge Colby said during a visit for talks at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels. Washington has sent out a questionnaire asking European countries to show what strides they are making towards taking the lead on protecting their continent after agreeing to ramp up military budgets massively.
“We’re actually having a kind of down-to-business conversation about how we go forward together in a world in which Europe, which is obviously a very wealthy continent, can and is taking primary responsibility for its own conventional defence,” Colby said. He said Washington was pushing “to advance and accelerate what’s happening, and then to look at the strategic posture at a high level of the US forces in Europe”.
The force review was announced by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth in June amid US anger at the response of European nations to the war with Iran, including restrictions on US forces using their bases at the start of the conflict. “Let’s look at some of things like access, basing, and overflights, where there is a lot of good, but there are some things that we need to work out, to make sense going forward,” Colby said.
After the meeting, Colby insisted the United States was “not looking in every context for a complete carte blanche, but we’re saying we need to be able to have the ability to operate effectively, we need predictability.” NATO chief Mark Rutte insisted that Washington’s allies were making progress by ramping up spending on defence and the acquisition of key capabilities.
“It is still continuing. Still, much more to be done. We will get there,” Rutte told Colby. A European diplomat told AFP that the talks between Colby and ambassadors from NATO members had been “constructive”. “At the end he said he was heartened by the conversation in the room and looked forward to more consultation,” the diplomat said.
Colby told journalists that “the United States is not leaving the continent, it’s not leaving the alliance, it’s saying we’re going to make this fit for purpose.” Trump has long pressured Europe to spend more on defence as Washington signals it wants to step back from the continent to focus on other challenges such as China.
The Pentagon, which has some 80,000 troops stationed in Europe, has already told allies it is reducing the number of assets it makes available for NATO’s defence plans. Washington also said in May it would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, but Trump later said he was sending the same number to neighbouring Poland. European countries are massively ramping up military budgets, agreeing in 2025 to Trump’s demand to devote five percent of GDP to security-related spending by 2035.
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