US announces military review as European leaders await cuts

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the United States will kick off a six-month review of its military presence in Europe as leaders in the region brace for a plan for deep cuts to American support for the continent.

President Donald Trump's administration has floated plans to slash military assets the Pentagon would send to defend Europe in case of an attack, raising questions about how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would replace those capabilities. Hegseth's NATO counterparts urged him to at least coordinate the withdrawal with European capitals.

"I'm announcing today a six-month Department of War review that will examine America's force posture and basing in Europe," Hegseth said at the start of a meeting of defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, using the administration's designation for the Department of Defense.

"This will be a real review," he added, signaling that more cuts may come as the U.S. presses Europe to take primary responsibility for its conventional defense.

Trump earlier this year blindsided allies by announcing the withdrawal of at least 5,000 troops from Germany. The announcement came after a rift between Trump and Chancellor Friedrich Merz over comments the German leader made disparaging U.S. negotiations on Iran.

The U.S. had about 80,000 military personnel stationed in Europe as of last year, a number that surged after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Nearly half of those are deployed in Germany, a legacy of the allied victory in World War II.

For NATO, U.S. cuts will go further, as laid out by plans the administration presented to NATO counterparts over the past few weeks. They include a 30% reduction in available strategic bombers, which European militaries don't have, a nearly complete loss of reconnaissance and attack drones, a 50% decline in naval vessels and a drop in fighter-jet deployment by a third, Bloomberg reported last week.

The U.S. secretary's message to counterparts included a broadside over their perceived lack of support in the U.S.-led war on Iran. Hegseth said Europe's refusal to provide access to its bases was "shameful" and endangered "America's sons and daughters." European nations have largely provided logistical support for the U.S. campaign.

The secretary said U.S. annual dues to NATO will be contingent on other allies meeting their defense spending targets, a year after most allies committed to spending 5% of their economic output on core defense and defense-related expenditure. A comprehensive review of the U.S. force posture around the world was initially expected last year, but was delayed.

The review would be designed to ensure that NATO is moving fast and "irreversibly toward Europe leading, stepping up to take primary responsibility for the defense of Europe, stepping up to ensure our forces and postured toward America's global need," Hegseth said.

Trump's defense chief stayed a little more than two hours, missing a planned meeting of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with ministers. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said the alliance was undergoing "the biggest transformation in its history," acknowledging that there would be "rocky phases" in the transatlantic relationship.

It was "only logical" that the U.S. would review its force posture now that other allies are stepping up, Rutte said, suggesting it was a consequence rather than the reason behind European and Canadian allies ramping up defense investment.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, commenting at the same gathering, called on the U.S. to better coordinate reduction plans in Europe to prevent the continent from being left exposed in an event of an armed conflict.

It was "always foreseeable" that Washington was going to shift its priorities to Indo-China - and European allies are ready to take on more responsibility for their own conventional deterrence and defense, Pistorius said, calling for a "roadmap for synchronizing the individual steps."

"The decision on who will take over which tasks from the Americans, should it come to that, has not yet been made," Pistorius said. "But one thing is clear: we must coordinate these responsibilities; we must synchronize them to prevent dangerous capability gaps from emerging in Europe in the conventional domain."

Europe needed to scale up its capability to compensate for the loss of US hardware, "but not everything immediately." He cited as an example deep-strike missile capability.

Hegseth's push to have allies pay more for their own defense is part of a broader administration effort to offload the costs of protecting Europe and supporting Ukraine onto NATO allies while seeking to reinvest in the U.S. defense industrial base.

As part of those efforts, Europeans agreed to foot the bill for U.S. weapons and ammunition deliveries to Ukraine, whose allies have lauded it for escalating its attacks deep within Russian territory and stealing the initiative.

Russia's capital faced a record air bombardment overnight on Thursday, with drones reaching the Moscow Oil Refinery, disrupting airport operations and forcing the closure of several major roads.

Pistorius said Germany would spend some $200 million for U.S. air defense ammunition for Ukraine as part of a program that lets allies buy U.S. equipment for Kyiv, known as PURL. It will provide an additional $200 million for another program to help Ukraine purchase guided missiles for the U.S.-made Patriot air defense system.

Separately, NATO defense ministers said the alliance will modernize its nuclear capabilities and improve planning, in a rare statement on an area of deterrence that's gaining more focus as the U.S. scales down.

The joint commitment follows a meeting in a nuclear planning group format in Brussels that was attended by Hegseth. It includes an agreement to "adapt" nuclear policy and to work on "investing in the resources, capabilities, and forces required to deliver NATO's nuclear mission."

Several European countries, including Lithuania and Finland, have either begun discussions or gone as far as change their laws to be able to host nuclear weapons on their soil.

(Katharina Rosskopf and Alexander Pearson contributed to this report.)

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This story was originally published June 18, 2026 at 11:03 PM.