America’s allies in Europe have been left wary and reeling after a tumultuous three weeks in the trans-Atlantic alliance, in which President Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull troops away from the continent only to seemingly change course.
The whiplash was clear on Friday as Europe reacted to Mr. Trump’s social media announcement that the United States would be sending 5,000 troops to Poland. The decision, which he announced late on Thursday night, appeared to be a reversal from his administration’s earlier threat to cancel or delay a deployment of 4,000 troops to the country.
European officials responded cautiously. They made it clear that they believe the United States is still pivoting away from the continent, and several used the oscillating signals from the White House to galvanize their calls for Europe to push for greater military self-reliance.
“I welcome the announcement,” Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, told reporters at a meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers in Sweden on Friday morning. But he added that Europe’s trajectory away from dependence on the United States would continue.
A more self-sufficient Europe would give the United States “the possibility and the option to pivot more towards other priorities, which are also in our interest,” Mr. Rutte said.
Polish officials embraced the news, though in some cases with muted language.
“The presence of American troops in Poland will be maintained more or less at previous levels,” Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, said on Friday morning, after thanking Mr. Trump. He suggested that “Poland’s reputation as a country that takes defense seriously” had helped to bring about the decision.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon had also spoken of plans to withdraw 5,000 troops from military bases in Germany. That decision came as Mr. Trump responded angrily to remarks by Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, that Iran had “humiliated” the United States.
Experts have said — and officials have hinted — that the Trump administration’s flip-flopping this month over troop commitments in Europe risked further undermining trust that was already fraying.
“It is confusing indeed, and not always easy to navigate,” Maria Malmer Stenergard, Sweden’s foreign minister, told reporters ahead of the meeting of foreign ministers.
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Europe has relied on America for military support since the world wars, but that relationship has been upended since Mr. Trump’s second term began in early 2025. The United States has prodded Europeans to spend far more on their own defense, and NATO members have responded by racing to build up their own military industrial bases.
At the same time, a series of actions and comments from the White House have undermined confidence in the United States as a partner. Mr. Trump has pulled support away from Ukraine. He threatened earlier this year to take over Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. And he has repeatedly called into question America’s commitment to joint defense under NATO.
He has voiced disappointment in European allies, saying they have done too little to support the United States in its war in Iran.
The barrage of criticism has underscored to Europe’s leaders that depending on the United States leaves them in a precarious position.
“We can celebrate this win, if it comes to that, but we have to be wary of the broader trend lines,” said Philip Bednarczyk, the Warsaw office director at the German Marshall Fund, a research institute. “The nature of the alliance has changed, and even in polls, trust in the U.S. has plummeted.”
Even in Poland, America’s most ardent supporter in Europe by some measures, Mr. Bednarczyk said that officials had begun to raise serious questions about the state of the partnership behind closed doors.
Marco Rubio, America’s secretary of state, underscored at the foreign ministers’ meeting in Sweden on Friday that the United States still planned to reassess where it kept its forces. America had a longer-term strategy of moving forces away from Europe.
“The United States continues to have global commitments that it needs to meet in terms of our force deployment, and that constantly requires us to re-examine where we put troops,” Mr. Rubio said. “This is not a punitive thing. It’s just something that’s ongoing, and it was preexisting.”
The earlier announcements of troop drawdowns in Germany and the cancellation of a deployment in Poland spurred serious worries in Europe. In the United States, Republican lawmakers particularly criticized the Trump administration’s decision on Poland, which borders Russia. America’s troops in Europe are seen as an important deterrent against Russian invasion.
Amid the fallout, the Pentagon had already softened its stance, saying on Tuesday that it foresaw only “a temporary delay of the deployment of U.S. forces to Poland, which is a model U.S. ally.”
Then came Mr. Trump’s social media post on Thursday night.
“I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland,” he posted on Truth Social.
The president suggested that he was making the surprise move “based on the successful election” of Karol Nawrocki, Poland’s conservative nationalist president. Mr. Nawrocki won the election a year ago.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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