BRUSSELS – In a high-stakes address to NATO allies at the alliance’s Brussels headquarters on Thursday, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a clear call: European and North American partners must demonstrate tangible progress in strengthening their own defense capabilities on the continent, as Washington reorients its strategic focus to security threats closer to its borders and across the Indo-Pacific region.
The U.S. has already begun reducing its long-standing military footprint in Europe, though roughly 80,000 American troops remain deployed across the continent. Top Pentagon officials have also launched a formal strategic review to determine the scope of additional troop cuts, with the final scale of reductions directly tied to how thoroughly allies meet U.S. demands for a sweeping overhaul of NATO’s defense burden-sharing framework.
Under the proposed restructuring, European allies and Canada would take primary responsibility for conventional defense of the European continent. The U.S. would step into a supporting role, only deploying strategic assets including nuclear weapons if a major crisis requires additional intervention. For decades, a large, persistent U.S. military presence has formed the backbone of NATO’s deterrence strategy against potential adversaries in Europe, most notably Russia.
Following a closed-door briefing for alliance members, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby spoke to reporters, singling out Germany, Poland, and Nordic nations for praise over their recent efforts to boost defense spending and operational readiness. But he also made clear that Washington expects far more contributions from other major alliance members, including the United Kingdom.
Colby emphasized that the Pentagon’s end goal is to reshape NATO into a more pragmatic, balanced alliance structure aligned with current global security realities. “That’s the spirit we’re going to continue pursuing our Europe posture review in,” he told reporters.
To gather clarity on ally commitments, the Pentagon has distributed a formal questionnaire to all NATO members, requesting detailed written responses laying out how each country plans to meet U.S. strategic objectives. Colby confirmed that the department has received a small number of completed responses so far, but declined to name which countries have submitted their questionnaires.
Notably, the survey includes questions beyond core NATO collective defense commitments. It asks whether allies will grant U.S. forces unrestricted access to their military bases and airspace, a provision that addresses past frictions between Washington and European capitals. Many European allies hesitated to support the U.S. 2003 invasion of Iraq, and more recently declined to back U.S. military action against Iran without prior multilateral consultation, creating tensions within the alliance.
Colby defended the inclusion of these broader requests, noting that preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon is a shared strategic goal for both the U.S. and European nations. “We need to be able to have the ability to operate effectively. We need predictability,” he said.