Trump Admin’s Europe Troop Posture Swings Again As Pentagon Weighs NATO Base Access

The Trump administration is again weighing changes to the U.S. military footprint in Europe after months of troop cuts, new deployments and abandoned drawdown plans repeatedly reshaped Washington’s posture on the continent.

The Pentagon’s ongoing review of the U.S. military footprint in Europe is examining whether American forces have assured access to allied bases and airspace as officials determine how forces should be positioned to meet U.S. global requirements, according to the Department of War.  The review marks the latest development in an uneven effort to reduce European dependence on American conventional forces while preserving U.S. military flexibility in strategically important parts of the continent.

“The answer depends on whether you think that the U.S. still has very important security interests in Europe. If we do, … these new conditions are self-defeating,” Barry Posen, Ford International Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We want access to defend our interests there. Whether they also help elsewhere is simply a bonus, not a requirement.”

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby said the administration is not demanding unrestricted authority to use European bases, but argued the U.S. needs greater certainty that allies will provide access when American forces are called upon to operate.

“We’re not looking in every context for a complete carte blanche,” Colby told reporters Thursday at NATO headquarters, adding that the U.S. needs “predictability” from its European allies.

“The number of U.S. forces in Europe is already at a historic low, amounting to only about 15 percent of the level seen at the peak of the Cold War,” Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the DCNF. “Already, about 85 percent of U.S. ground forces are permanently based in the United States. This means that withdrawing several thousand U.S. troops from Europe would have no meaningful impact on America’s overall security in the Western Hemisphere, but it would have an impact on U.S. strategic interests in Europe.”

Colby specifically pointed to the Iran war as an example of that uncertainty, saying reliable access “wasn’t always in evidence during Operation Epic Fury,” according to his remarks at NATO headquarters.

“He wants to get something extra for defending Europe, and that is total discretion about how to use European bases,” Posen told the DCNF. “It is unlikely that he will get it, even from his best friends in Europe.”

The back-and-forth began in May when the Department of War announced it would reduce the number of Army brigade combat teams in Europe from four to three, removing a formation containing more than 4,000 soldiers along with artillery and heavy equipment.

The Pentagon said at the time that the change was intended to advance President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda by encouraging NATO allies to assume primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense, according to the Department of War.

Just days later, however, Trump appeared to pull the posture in the opposite direction.

Trump announced an additional 5,000 U.S. troops for Poland following the election of Polish President Karol Nawrocki, although the president did not specify whether those forces would come from the United States or be repositioned from elsewhere in Europe.

At the same time, Trump was publicly considering possible troop reductions in Germany, further clouding where the administration ultimately intended to concentrate American forces.

“Any decision to remove U.S. forces from Europe should be taken as part of a broader force posture review, which the administration has committed to conducting but the results of which are nowhere to be found,” Coffey told the DCNF.

Posen argued that access to the Middle East may be the main reason the U.S. military is clinging to its European bases.

“On the other hand, if you think US interests in Europe have waned, then why would the US spend money leaving forces there at all?” Posen told the DCNF. “Is access to other theaters really worth so much? Finally, what is the theater to which Europe gives you access? It is the Middle East. That has not worked out so well, so why bargain with allies to make it easier for future presidents to blunder into Middle East ‘excursions.'”

NATO allies began preparing to replace roughly $40 billion to $50 billion worth of American aircraft, ships and drones being withdrawn from NATO crisis-response allocations in June, while U.S. officials framed the shift as part of the administration’s “NATO 3.0” initiative.

“The review is consistent with a transition toward ‘NATO 3.0,’ in which Europe assumes primary responsibility for conventional defense while the United States retains key enabling capabilities, the nuclear guarantee, and a limited forward presence,” Jonathan Burchell, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the DCNF. “Importantly, this transition is already underway.”

“There has been an unhealthy co-dependence in the NATO Force Model on U.S. forces,” U.S. European Command chief Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said while discussing the changes in Brussels, according to U.S. European Command.

Yet the administration again appeared to change course weeks later.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth prepared another proposal to reduce U.S. troop levels in Europe but scrapped the plan shortly before he was expected to announce it in Brussels after Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio and other senior White House officials became involved, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

“Europe is also simply too important for the United States to ignore or, frankly, to leave solely to the Europeans. Europe is America’s number one export market,” Coffey told the DCNF. “Forty-eight out of 50 states export more to Europe than they do to China, and Europe is the largest source of foreign investment into the United States. Together, this trade and investment supports millions of American jobs. The U.S. military presence in Europe, alongside NATO, serves as the primary security guarantor of what is America’s most important economic relationship.”

The Pentagon’s newest review may offer a clearer indication of what determines which forces stay and which leave.

Access, basing and overflight rights have been a formal part of the Pentagon’s Europe posture review since Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the review in June, saying it would ensure U.S. “access, basing and overflight are clearly delineated and assured,” according to the Department of War.

Britain initially stayed out of the U.S.-Israeli strikes before Prime Minister Keir Starmer authorized U.S. use of British bases for “specific and limited defensive” strikes against Iranian missile sites the following day, according to 10 Downing Street. Spain, by contrast, denied the U.S. use of Rota and Morón for the Iran War and rejected all flight plans connected to the operation, including those involving refueling aircraft, according to La Moncloa.

After months of reductions, reinforcements and abandoned plans, the latest review could determine whether the administration ultimately pursues a broad European drawdown or instead concentrates American forces in allied countries willing to provide Washington the military access it wants.

“This is an abnegation of the sovereign responsibility of a government to look after the welfare of its own people. Some US wars may be in their interests; some not,” Posen told the DCNF. “This is a blank check. It seems to me that this is a bit of a trap for European states, which will produce reactions that then justify what E. Colby wants to do anyway, which is get out of Europe to prepare for war in Asia.”

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