BRUSSELS — The Trump administration’s widening split with European allies and suggestions of dialing back U.S. troop numbers have fueled European nervousness about how much the continent can still rely on the 80-year-old bargain with the United States that has underpinned its security since World War II.
European leaders are in the uncomfortable position of having more questions than answers about what President Donald Trump plans to do with U.S. troops on the continent. If a drawdown happens, it could be anywhere from just a symbolic withdrawal to Europe’s worst fears, and the fallout will depend on how many troops and how fast, officials and analysts say.
Above all, European leaders want to ensure that if some kind of drawdown does take place, it will not be the product of U.S. negotiations with the Kremlin. Trump’s move toward realignment with Russia has fed into the European nightmare of Washington accepting Moscow’s demands for NATO to roll back from Eastern Europe in a deal that leaves Russia’s neighbors vulnerable before Europeans can beef up their defenses.
“This is what they have in mind when they say nothing about European security without Europeans in the room,” said Camille Grand, a former NATO official who is now with the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Many NATO allies left a meeting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last month believing that Washington could pull thousands of troops from Europe in the coming years, officials said. Hegseth conveyed that his European counterparts should expect a review and eventual reduction of the American military footprint as U.S. interests shift and the administration asks Europeans to take charge of their security.
Despite assurances from Trump officials of no imminent pullout, the president’s dizzying reshaping of alliances, including his latest clash with Kyiv, has reinforced European convictions that they can’t predict what Trump will ultimately do. At this critical juncture, the United States’ longtime partners are doing a balancing act: trying to bend Trump to their side while preparing for a United States that may no longer be reliable and could even be antagonistic.
The shift has triggered existential warnings from European leaders about the future of NATO and the transatlantic relationship, as they scramble to bolster their militaries and find billions of euros to modernize their arsenals.
Vice President JD Vance has brought another element to the debate: Along with scolding European leaders for shunning the far right, he has tied the future of U.S. troops to European policymaking. The messaging compounds European alarm that its security hinges on the U.S. administration’s views of its efforts to regulate tech or hate speech.
“There are thousands upon thousands of American troops in Germany today,” Vance said last month. “Do you think that the American taxpayer is going to stand for that if you get thrown in jail in Germany for posting a mean tweet? Of course they’re not.”
Germany has more than 35,000 U.S. troops, the largest number in Europe, on a host of bases throughout the country.
Trump has dismissed the idea of withdrawing all U.S. troops from Europe in a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I don’t think we’d have to do that. I wouldn’t want to do that,” he has said when asked if he’d consider a complete retreat. “But that question’s never really come up.”
While the prospect of Putin pushing NATO out of the Western military alliance’s eastern flank may seem distant for now, some European officials warn they must still make contingencies.
As Trump moves to negotiate with Russia to halt the war in Ukraine, Russian officials maintain that they want to eliminate “root causes” of the conflict. In Eastern European and Baltic states, fears run deep that Moscow will make demands beyond Ukraine and seek to roll back the expansion of NATO there in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Many of Russia’s neighbors have drastically boosted defense budgets.
Reflecting the uncertainty, one European diplomat said there was “no way” the United States would order a major withdrawal because Washington needs its footprint here, too, while another said Europeans should be planning for the worst anyway.
The expansive U.S. military presence goes far beyond protecting Europe, diplomats note. It’s also about projecting American power and serving U.S. interests. The Ramstein Air Base in Germany, a critical U.S. hub in Europe, has been regularly used for U.S. operations far outside the continent.
Except for a rebound early in Russia’s war in Ukraine, the U.S. deployment in Europe has been declining since the end of the Cold War.
U.S. administrations long before Trump 2.0 warned Europeans that priorities would shift elsewhere, including to the Indo-Pacific. But European leaders find themselves insufficiently equipped and are realizing that a U.S. pivot could come more abruptly than expected. Some hope they could persuade the administration that any plans to move forces would involve a discussion over allowing time to prepare to fill gaps.
Three European diplomats said they expect the surge of about 20,000 U.S. troops announced by the Biden administration early in the Ukraine war to be withdrawn.
“I would not be surprised if at some point [those troops] go back to their home base in America,” said a NATO diplomat. The forces were sent at a height of emergency planning, so if they leave “it would be, so to speak, a return to normalcy.”
If European troops were to send a postwar force to Ukraine to back a ceasefire, that could also hinder efforts to fill any U.S. gaps elsewhere, which will become part of the push-pull in European talks with the Trump administration, analysts said.
Alongside forces spread out across American or NATO-allied bases in Europe, there’s also a critical contingent involved in command-and-control. The number of U.S. forces in Europe has fluctuated between about 75,000 and 105,000 since 2022, with about 63,000 permanently assigned while others rotate in and out, U.S. European Command said.
Their mere presence can carry more weight than exact numbers. “It’s the sort of physical embodiment of the commitment to European security,” Grand said.
But beyond troops, Washington brings high-end capabilities in which Europe is lagging, including for surveillance and long-range strikes, analysts and officials say. It also brings a promise of reinforcements that would be key to NATO quick-response plans.
In European nations that have long relied on Washington to check Russian power, questions are simmering about whether they would get U.S. backup in a future crisis or have to stand alone.
With the end of the Cold War meant to herald a less belligerent world, the armed forces of European nations such as Britain and Germany shrank, as many invested in other priorities over weapons systems.
European governments have hiked military spending in recent years and defenses aren’t in such dire straits that “the world is falling apart if Trump pulls another brigade,” Grand said, but reversing trends won’t be easy.
“The Europeans have a serious problem of readiness … that they’re trying to fix, but it takes time,” he added. “If Trump decides, ‘I’m going to pull out U.S. troops from Germany because I’m upset with the trade imbalance,’ that’s much more complicated to manage than to say we have a plan to do this within X years.”
A plan in the first Trump administration that weighed relocating thousands of troops from Germany didn’t come to fruition.
In Poland, host to about 10,000 American troops, Hegseth said last month that the administration recognizes its footprint in Europe is “important to deter” Russia, but warned not to assume “that America’s presence will last forever.” He said what happens in the coming years would be “part of a larger discussion” in Washington and with allies.
The timeline of that discussion remains elusive for Europe. Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British diplomat and senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said it is unclear “how much, how far, in practice,” the United States could disengage from Europe.
“I just worry that, given, frankly, President Trump’s mercurial nature,” he said, “how much confidence really can Europe have in any degree of American protection and defense.”
