At a Spanish port 50 miles northwest of Gibraltar, four Turkish Navy ships, including a brand-new amphibious assault ship that doubles as an aircraft carrier, were set to arrive Friday to take part in NATO military exercises.
Heavy winds had delayed the Turkish vessels, but once they dock at the Spanish Navy port, they will form a fleet with Spanish ships, sail around the continent and rendezvous with French, German, Polish and Dutch vessels. They will then travel to Germany’s Baltic Sea coast, bringing tanks, landing craft, helicopters, drones and troops from southern Europe to northern Germany.
About 10,000 troops from 11 nations will participate. But not a single U.S. weapon or soldier will be among them.
Conceived long before President Trump was accused of undermining faith in the military alliance and its defense pact, the exercise, called Steadfast Dart, is being watched closely to see how well the allies manage without their largest and most important partner.
On paper, Steadfast Dart is designed to gauge how quickly the countries can get their military assets from one end of the continent to the other in case of an attack, a test of NATO’s Allied Reaction Force. But it comes as European leaders are scrambling to respond to signals from Washington that the NATO alliance is no longer as untouchable as it once was.
“This exercise could well give an impression of the future of a Europeanized NATO,” said Lukas Mengelkamp, an analyst at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg.
The operation is the largest NATO exercise planned for this year, and with it, European NATO partners aim to show what they can do on their own.
“In the times we live now, it is very important to demonstrate the unity of the alliance,” Ingo Gerhartz, the German Air Force general overseeing the operation, said on board the Spanish lead vessel, Castillo.
General Gerhartz called the exercise a “great and important signal” that nations from southern Europe can deploy to Central Europe in the case of a crisis.
Within NATO, the American military is not only the biggest member, it is also unquestionably the leader. Besides the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, two of the three Joint Force Command commanders are American, and three of the tactical commands — air, land and space — in Europe are in the hands of American generals.
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The fact that no Americans are participating in the exercise is no accident. When plans were drawn up for this and last year’s iteration of the exercise, they were to test how well European nations could work together if the American forces, which usually do the heavy lifting, were occupied elsewhere.
But even exercises like Steadfast Dart can function only because American officers helped plan it. Regardless of the viability of this operation, which will run through February, European military leaders acknowledge that any real NATO action needs significant support from American partners, especially if the fighting starts.
Besides conventional weapons and soldiers, which European armies can try to replace, the United States has many irreplaceable tools that European nations do not — such as a significant stock of long-range missiles and satellite intelligence.
“I have no doubt that the U.S. will stay in NATO and will stay with us if we have to defend Europe,” said General Gerhatz, who added that he expected U.S. troops to be part of future military exercises.
The Pan-European flotilla, which is under Spanish command, will leave Rota, Spain, during the weekend and take weeks to make its way up to Germany. On the way it will meet up with frigates and mine sweepers from other nations. For the Turkish carrier, this will be its first time sailing in the Baltic Sea. France is scheduled to conduct a mock attack on the flotilla using fighter jets from its Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier.
The exercise, which stipulates that some units have to arrive at the destination in just 10 days, also includes other means of transport across Europe, including road- and aircraft-based transportation, as well as commercial shipping.
Next month, the ships will stage a landing on Germany’s Baltic coast. There, they will hold live-fire exercises. Turkish marines force will lead the amphibious landing.
As the host nation, Germany will play a leading role in the logistics exercise. That reflects the extent to which the country has become essential in Europe’s defense, both because of its ambition to become Europe’s biggest conventional army and because of its strategic position at the center of the continent.
Even without a major NATO shake-up as threatened by Mr. Trump, German military staff and experts point to an American defense strategy paper that states Europeans must take a larger role in defending NATO interests in Europe.
“Given official announcements by the U.S. government that it intends to reduce its involvement in the conventional defense mission, it is very likely that we will see more purely European exercises in the future,” said Mr. Mengelkamp, the analyst.
Still, he noted, American strategic planning and oversight will play an important role for a while longer.
Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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