A bombshell plan to drastically reduce U.S. military assets earmarked for potential NATO crises has emerged as President Trump’s most severe punishment yet of European allies who declined to support his Iran war, marking an extraordinary weaponization of alliance infrastructure against its own members.
The administration plans to formally inform NATO partners before a coming summit that Washington will, as one official put it, “shrink the pool of military capabilities” maintained in Europe, according to reporting published on May 20. While the specific forces and equipment being drawn down remain classified, the decision represents Trump’s most tangible action yet to scale back American commitments to the 76-year-old alliance.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the White House’s position explicit at a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Helsingborg, Sweden, where he questioned whether the alliance still serves American interests after allies refused base access during the Iran conflict. “When some of those bases are denied to you — during a conflict that we’re involved in — then you question whether that value is still there,” Rubio said. He noted that Trump’s frustration would “have to be addressed” at a NATO summit later that year.
Pentagon Insists Nuclear Umbrella Holds
Defense Department officials have publicly stressed that the U.S. remains committed to providing a nuclear deterrent against attacks on Europe, even as the administration looks to hand conventional defense responsibilities over to continental partners. Trump, according to officials briefed on his thinking, expects European partners to assume “primary responsibility for the continent’s security.”
NATO’s top military officer, U.S. Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, said the drawdown would be executed by canceling upcoming deployments to Poland and Germany rather than withdrawing stationed forces, and warned allies to expect more cuts ahead. “It’s going to be an ongoing process for several years,” he said. The administration has made clear it sees the drawdown not as a routine force-posture adjustment but as a tool of leverage — retribution dressed up as strategic realignment.
Trump’s anger intensified after he initiated military action against Iran without significant support from NATO capitals. Allies including the United Kingdom and Spain subsequently refused to permit American forces to use their bases or airspace to strike Tehran in the weeks that followed — denials that have since escalated into a full-blown diplomatic crisis.
Germany Bears the First Blow
Berlin received the first concrete punishment when Trump announced the withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany after Chancellor Friedrich Merz told a group of German schoolchildren that Tehran had “humiliated” Washington with its resistance to the American military campaign. The president has since publicly floated extending that drawdown to Italy and Spain, and has threatened to suspend “difficult” countries from important or prestigious positions within NATO’s command structure.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has drawn particular venom from the White House. Trump has dismissed him as “no Churchill” and threatened to reassess U.S. diplomatic support for British claims to the Falkland Islands. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who refused American use of bases on Spanish soil, has faced the confusing threat of expulsion from an alliance that has no expulsion procedure.
Trump has also rattled relations by reviving threats to invade Greenland, an autonomous territory of fellow NATO member Denmark — a posture that plunged the alliance into a historically unprecedented crisis, before diplomatic efforts pushed those threats to the back burner.
The ‘Naughty and Nice’ List
The capability reduction follows a leaked internal scorecard, dubbed the “naughty and nice” list, in which administration officials catalogued which NATO members deserved punishment for their stance on Iran. The document floated suspending Spain from the alliance for refusing overflight rights, and even returning the Falkland Islands to Argentina — a swipe at the United Kingdom that would reward Argentine President Javier Milei, who has cultivated a warm rapport with Trump.
European officials have largely dismissed the most inflammatory penalties as unworkable. There is no legal mechanism within the North Atlantic Treaty for expelling an alliance member, and unilaterally handing British territory to Buenos Aires would face overwhelming diplomatic resistance. But analysts say the leak itself was the point.
“It’s difficult to believe that it would be a coincidence that these options would be leaked without there being some type of signaling intent to put pressure on some European allies,” Joel Linnainmäki, a research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, told reporters in Brussels.
That message had been telegraphed months earlier. In December 2024, then-incoming Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that “model allies that step up” would receive special favor — and those that did not would face consequences.
A Boost for Macron’s European Army
The turbulence has handed French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been pushing for a joint, coordinated European military force since 2018, an unexpected gift. Trump’s posture has lent fresh legitimacy to Macron’s long-standing argument that Europeans must build their own defense architecture rather than rely on Washington’s goodwill.
A recent analysis from RAND on how NATO allies might respond if the United States retrenches from Europe suggests the continent’s capitals are increasingly modeling a future in which the American security guarantee is partial, conditional, or absent altogether. The withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany has already accelerated those conversations.
For now, European officials are waiting for the formal notification that Trump’s team has promised to deliver before a coming summit — and bracing for what may come next. The White House has not publicly addressed the timing or scope of the planned reductions, and the Pentagon has declined to elaborate on which units or capabilities will be affected.
What once would have been unthinkable — an American president openly weaponizing the alliance’s military architecture against its own members — has become the operating principle of transatlantic relations.
