We got this. That was the Trump administration’s message to European allies in the early days of its war with Iran. Washington hadn’t warned its NATO partners about the military campaign, jointly undertaken with Israel, much less consulted with them about the war’s objectives.
Instead, American officials told Europeans to look after their own interests. Specifically, the Pentagon advised counterparts in Berlin to concentrate on NATO’s eastern flank—the part of the alliance closest to Russia—while the United States managed Iran and the rest of the Middle East, two German officials told me. “They were really confident,” one of the officials said, referring to U.S. war planners.
But that confidence was short-lived, and after President Trump’s hope for a swift victory faded, he began lashing out at NATO for not doing enough to help the United States. Inside the Pentagon, meanwhile, the team helping manage the military’s relationship with NATO allies was about to take a hit.
In March, the director of NATO policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense was abruptly reassigned, current and former U.S. officials told me. Mark Jones, who had spent more than two decades working on NATO and Europe policy as both a soldier and civil servant, was viewed as out of step with the administration’s jaundiced view of the alliance. His removal, which has not previously been reported, undermined U.S. cooperation with European partners just as the war in Iran was creating a new crisis in relations with the continent.
The crisis became apparent when stalemate conditions took hold in the Middle East. Iran effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, sending gas prices soaring. As the war continued, the U.S. military depleted key weapons stockpiles. The fallout is severe for Europe, which was already living with tremors from the war in Ukraine, and is now facing Iran-induced delays in U.S. weapons shipments, along with economic turmoil: inflation, energy price shocks, and strains on disparate industries including plastics, textiles, and toys. At the end of March, Slovenia became the first European country to introduce fuel rationing. Others have since taken similar steps.
Europe is all but powerless to influence the course of the conflict, despite the consequences it’s suffering. A European-led coalition is considering options to ensure freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for 20 percent of global oil and liquefied-natural-gas supplies. But the coalition’s leaders have said they will deploy military assets only once a durable cease-fire is in place. That still seems far off; as Trump declared the hostilities “terminated,” and vowed U.S. assistance for ships exiting the waterway, Iran threatened to attack American warships and other vessels that seek to transit the passage without its permission.
European leaders who have courted Trump’s favor over the past year have sometimes let slip their honest opinion of his war effort. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told schoolchildren last week that Iranian leaders had “humiliated” the United States. Trump reacted furiously, writing on Truth Social that Merz “doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” The president had already been smarting over not getting European help, which he thinks the United States is owed, for the Iran war. He called NATO allies “cowards” for not sending their navies to open the Strait of Hormuz, labeling the alliance a “paper tiger.”
[From the January issue: The new German war machine]
But Merz’s comments clearly stung in a new way. Trump said his administration was considering shrinking the U.S. military presence in Germany, promising a decision “over the next short period of time.” Two days later, the Pentagon indicated it would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany over the next year, out of nearly 40,000 stationed there. Officials told me there was no in-depth staff review prior to the announcement, meaning no detailed consideration of which units would be affected or of the broader implications of the drawdown.
That only a fraction of U.S. forces will say auf Wiedersehen demonstrates the symbolic nature of the move. But abrupt changes in U.S. deployments could interfere with training exercises, further alienating allies. And U.S. retrenchment without compensatory European reinforcements weakens NATO’s deterrent force—which is welcome news in Moscow.
In many ways, this is the scenario for which Europe, led by Germany, has been preparing, spurred on by the need for autonomy from Trump’s erratic decision making. Virtually since NATO’s founding, in 1949, American leaders have urged Europeans to spend more on their own defense. Past presidents have also threatened to withdraw troops in fits of pique. In 1973, Richard Nixon was so upset over the lack of European support for American efforts in the Yom Kippur War—a proxy battle with the Soviet Union—that he told Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser and secretary of state, he wanted to “get our boys back home.”
European leaders, faced with renewed Russian aggression in 2022 and then Trump’s reelection in 2024, have finally gotten the message. Germany spent $114 billion on defense in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 24 percent. Once a laggard, Germany is rebuilding its munitions stockpile, acquiring hundreds of tanks and thousands of armed vehicles, adding to its air defense, investing in cyber and satellite-reconnaissance capabilities, and buying the jets necessary to carry U.S. nuclear weapons.
[Read: Is the end of NATO near?]
Germany and its European neighbors would prefer to build up their capabilities in partnership with the United States, gradually taking over the conventional defense of the continent while continuing to rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella. When I interviewed Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, last summer, he emphasized the need for a plan delineating how European capabilities would compensate for any U.S. drawdown. “Let’s work out a road map. You do less, and we fulfill,” he said, “to avoid dangerous capability gaps in between.”
Trump clearly has other plans—or no plans beyond acting on grievances. The result is European powers recognizing that they must guard against being bullied and blackmailed by the president, or simply surprised by his whims. Pistorius, in a statement reacting to the planned troop withdrawal, argued, “We must strengthen the European pillar within NATO. In other words: as Europeans, we must take on more responsibility for our own security.”
Thomas Röwekamp, who chairs the defense committee in the Bundestag, Germany’s Parliament, was more pointed, saying, “The American president’s constant provocations are unacceptable.” He added, “We should not be unsettled by this, but rather resolutely strengthen our own capabilities. Europe must stand on its own two feet in terms of security policy—this is the course we have embarked upon.”
But what course is the United States following, and who is setting it? Not the now-former director of NATO policy at the Pentagon.
Traditionally, that role has been a vital one. Washington is by far the most powerful NATO member, and the policy director helps shape U.S. goals within the alliance, galvanize other member nations, and resolve disputes among them. Jones, the long-serving official in this position, had been working on NATO and Europe policy at the Pentagon since 2003. He joined the NATO office within the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2010 and became its director six years later. He mentored numerous U.S. officials who went on to serve in senior military and diplomatic positions. One former official called him an “institution.”
But Jones was blamed for being fundamentally too pro-NATO, current and former officials told me. Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, ordered a subordinate to notify Jones of his reassignment. In response to questions, Jones told me that he was still employed at the Pentagon and couldn’t comment on policy matters. In a statement, a Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on individual personnel matters but said, “We all serve at the pleasure of the president.”.
Just last month, Colby praised Germany’s new military strategy, which spells out the country’s plan to become Europe’s strongest conventional fighting force by 2039. On X, Colby posted photos of meetings with German military officials and diplomats, writing that the strategy “represents a clear, credible way forward to NATO 3.0: A NATO in which Europe and Canada step up to meet their responsibilities within the Alliance and transform it from a paper tiger to a strong deterrent and defense.”
I mentioned the plaudits at the time to a German official, who didn’t seem reassured. It’s hard to stay on the administration’s good side for long. Colby’s praise proved only the latest hairpin turn in the descent of U.S.-European relations. Within days, Trump had transformed the chancellor’s moment of candor into a full-blown standoff over the American military presence in Germany. But this, too, fits a broader pattern of a diminishing American presence in Europe.
[Read: The hardest job in Europe]
Washington has reduced its military footprint in Europe since the height of the Cold War, in the 1950s, when about 350,000 soldiers were based there, mostly in West Germany. Significant drawdowns occurred in the 1990s, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the 2000s, when assets were redeployed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first Trump administration drew up options to remove about 12,000 troops from Germany, which was cast by the president as a penalty for Berlin being “delinquent” in military spending. President Biden reversed the plans and later surged U.S. forces to Europe after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
An official at U.S. European Command, which oversees American military operations on the continent, told me this week that there are about 80,000 U.S. service members in the European theater, with the largest number—38,000—stationed in Germany. The soldiers work from key nodes in Germany of the global U.S.-military apparatus, including Ramstein Air Base and the headquarters of U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command, as well as Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the largest overseas U.S. hospital, which has treated U.S. service members wounded in the war in Iran.
The irony of Merz bearing the brunt of Trump’s anger is that Germany has allowed the U.S. military to use Ramstein as a staging ground for strikes and other aspects of its Iran operation. That’s in contrast with other NATO allies: Spain shut its airspace wholesale, while Italy blocked U.S. bombers from landing at a key air base in Sicily. Trump thanked Merz for the latitude his country had allowed the U.S. military when the two leaders met in Washington in early March, saying, “We appreciate it, and they’re just making it comfortable. We’re not asking them to put boots on the ground or anything.” Britain initially denied U.S. basing requests only to reverse course. The change didn’t improve Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s standing with Trump, who said of Starmer, “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”
What precisely Washington is asking of its allies has puzzled some European nations. The basing needs are clear. And American officials in bilateral meetings have spoken of the capabilities required to clear mines laid by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. But the broader bid for assistance remains ambiguous.
In past campaigns in the Middle East, the United States put together a coalition to specify its requests to European allies and coordinate action. When Washington responded to Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea beginning in December 2023, for instance, countries including Greece and Denmark sent frigates at the request of the U.S.
[Read: Why Europe is talking about nukes]
The Trump administration didn’t bother making specific requests of its European allies for the war against Iran. Instead, each day brought new, conflicting signals. At first, the message was that the United States and Israel could handle it. Then Trump lashed out on social media, saying allies “should have been there.” But the Trump administration never told key European partners what specifically it wanted from them in Iran, multiple European officials told me. The Pentagon spokesperson told me that the administration “has been consistently and repeatedly clear about the demand signal to allies to contribute to addressing a threat that affects Europe as much as America and our Middle East allies. The notion that the Department did not convey these requests widely and clearly is demonstrably false.”
NATO is a defensive alliance. The United States wasn’t attacked. Even so, if the Trump administration had simply asked for specific military assistance in Iran, European officials told me, some countries probably would have obliged. Good relations with Washington are that important to them—especially until they have strong-enough militaries to control their own fate. Until then, their leaders will continue to choose their words wisely, and suffer the consequences when they don’t.
The post Europe Learns to Live With an Erratic America appeared first on The Atlantic.
