


President Donald Trump took office in January promising big changes to U.S. policy on Europe and NATO. Both the MAGA base and vehement Trump opponents agreed that this was likely to happen. Six months in, though, there is reason to fear that Trump’s changes have not gone far enough.
At first, the administration appeared to be engaged in an aggressive burden-shifting strategy. As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described it in February, the goal was for European states to “take primary responsibility for defense of the continent.” Hegseth also handed off leadership of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, making clear that Europe would be in charge of running the effort to arm Ukraine.
In the early days of the administration, there was also flurry of panic in foreign-policy circles over reports that Trump might draw down some of the 20,000 additional troops that former President Joe Biden sent to Europe after Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The administration also toyed with, then abandoned, the idea of making NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe a European for the first time. This would have forced Europeans to grapple more seriously with the hard military realities facing their forces.
The message seemed to be getting through: Before taking the helm in Germany, now-Chancellor Friedrich Merz remarked that “We must be prepared for the fact that Donald Trump will no longer fully accept the promise of assistance under the NATO treaty,” adding that Europeans must “make every effort to at least be able to defend the … continent on their own.”
A visit to Brussels in April also confirmed my impression that Trump’s policies were having an impact. NATO officials assured me that their new capabilities targets reflected European plans to carry a much larger share of the burden. European Union officials pointed to the bloc’s uncommonly hawkish new Defense White Paper and the ReArm Europe plan, which contained hundreds of billions in Stability and Growth Pact exemptions and up to 150 billion euros (about $176 billion) in EU financing for extra weapons.
I was told in Brussels that without Trump’s policy changes on both Ukraine and Europe, neither the Defense White Paper nor the Readiness 2030 funds would have materialized. Things seemed to be moving faster than I had expected.
Now, however, it appears that the Trump administration is prepared to take written commitments on spending as an excuse to step back from making any changes on troop levels. This would be a mistake. It’s gauche to say out loud, but Europeans’ threat perception is the only thing that changes their defense spending. This means that reassuring Europe of the U.S. commitment—for example, by stationing roughly 90,000 troops there—has a downside: Europeans might be reassured. And if they are reassured, then they are less likely to spend more to defend themselves. Why would they?
Instead of focusing on troop levels, administration officials have seized on the Hague Summit Declaration, released after the NATO summit in June, as an excuse to declare victory. On paper, the declaration is promising. It commits NATO members to spend 3.5 percent of their respective GDPs on defense and 1.5 percent of GDP on critical infrastructure and other defense-related initiatives by 2035.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker went so far recently as to claim that these pledges mean “the bill for the defense of Europe is no longer on the backs of the American worker.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that with the Hague declaration, “a figure once dismissed as fantasy became reality.”
The problem is that these figures are not reality, and there are reasons to worry that they will not become reality. Promises to spend a certain percentage of GDP on defense 10 years in the future cannot justify burden-shifting in the present. And current European policymakers have no way of binding future European policymakers.
In fact, we have seen how much these kinds of pledges affect European defense spending: not much. Major European capitals mostly ignored their 2014 Wales declaration obligation to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense. It took two Russian invasions of Ukraine—and two Trump administrations—to begin to shake them from their slumber.
From an American point of view, the whole purpose of greater European spending on Europe is to justify less U.S. spending on Europe in an era of increasingly scarce resources. Instead of exulting over unenforceable rhetorical commitments, the Trump administration should use the one tool that will force Europe to step up: reducing the number of U.S. troops in Europe.
If Trump wants to put America first in Europe, then he needs to do two things. First, he should immediately begin withdrawing the additional 20,000 troops that his predecessor sent to the continent after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. To do this right, Trump should target Germany. Despite the chancellery’s effort to get German defense spending up to par, members of the German policy establishment seem to need regular reminders that their security is primarily their job.
Second, Trump should make clear that he is handing off responsibility for the Russia-Ukraine war to Europe by openly debating how to prioritize scarce weapons platforms. Right now, Ukraine’s biggest problem at present isn’t weapons—it’s manpower. Europeans can provide Ukraine enough munitions to help equip the force that Kyiv keeps in the field, which is the best that the country can currently hope for. When it comes to dwindling platforms such as Patriot missile systems, the Trump administration should prioritize the Indo-Pacific. If Europe sees that it is no longer the U.S. priority, that will only deepen their sense of urgency to rearm.
Trump and his administration are missing a crucial opportunity to shift the burden of European defense onto European shoulders. European NATO members collectively have roughly five times Russia’s GDP at purchasing power parity valuation, about five times its population, and already more than double its defense spending. If the central U.S. interest in Europe is preventing the rise of a hegemonic power on the continent, then that interest has long been achieved.
There is no reason why, with a U.S. push, Europe cannot contain Russia. The time for putting America first in Europe is now. To make it happen, Trump should stop focusing on paper promises and reduce U.S. forces on the continent, driving home the point that conventional deterrence in Europe is now primarily Europe’s responsibility.