The Pentagon launched a six-month review of the United States’ military footprint in Europe on 28 July, in what a new analysis describes as likely to be the most consequential reassessment of American force posture on the continent for a generation.
Writing for the Council on Geostrategy’s Strategic Defence Unit, John Foreman CBE, who served as UK Defence Attaché in Kyiv from 2008 to 2011 and in Moscow from 2019 to 2022, argues that the significance of the review lies less in headline troop figures than in the division of responsibilities it produces.
Foreman writes that Washington is trying to resolve a strategic dilemma: “how to maintain credible deterrence against Russia while reallocating military resources to prevent Chinese military dominance in the Indo-Pacific, but without undermining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) political cohesion, its centre of gravity.”
The preferred American end state has been described as NATO 3.0, under which European allies assume primary responsibility for their conventional defence while the United States concentrates on strategic enablers and deterrence, freeing its forces for use elsewhere, with extended nuclear deterrence continuing. Foreman notes this reflects a Washington assessment that European allies already possess a substantial conventional advantage over Russia.
General Alexus Grynkewich, commander of US European Command, has already warned allies to expect force reductions. Foreman records that EUCOM today comprises more than 80,000 military and civilian personnel, around 65,000 of them permanently based in Europe and mainly in Germany, down from a peak of roughly 100,000 immediately after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The analysis sets out the three priority missions Grynkewich has given the Senate Armed Services Committee: securing the strategic approaches to the continental United States, particularly the Atlantic and Arctic; projecting combat power in and beyond Europe; and positioning NATO to defend and deter against external aggression. Foreman argues these overlapping responsibilities are why the review “must extend beyond simplistic arguments about troop numbers” and must instead determine which missions European allies can assume and which continue to require uniquely American capabilities.
He points to recent operations against the Russian shadow fleet, Iranian nuclear facilities and Daesh affiliates in Africa, all of which relied on American bases in Europe and close cooperation with European allies, arguing the review must consider which capabilities have to remain in theatre if the United States is to keep projecting power into neighbouring regions.
Adjustments were already under way before the review was announced. A rotational US Army Brigade Combat Team returned home at the end of 2025 without replacement, and the Pentagon cancelled a planned deployment of another to Poland before President Donald Trump reversed that decision. The administration announced the withdrawal of 5,000 personnel from Germany, which Foreman says was widely interpreted as a response to Berlin’s criticism of American operations against Iran, and cancelled a previous commitment to deploy long-range missiles to Germany periodically, including ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles.
That pattern, the analysis argues, creates a planning problem for allies. European governments are “being encouraged to assume greater responsibility for their own defence, but their planning is complicated if US deployments can be announced, cancelled, or reversed with little or no consultation.”
Foreman judges the most likely outcome to be a leaner American presence built around nuclear deterrence, strategic enablers, intelligence, command and control, strategic mobility, rotational deployments and naval, air and special forces, reducing those conventional capabilities European allies could plausibly replace within a decade while preserving those that remain uniquely American. He notes, however, that the cuts may go further, with Trump having mused before the Ankara summit about reducing troop numbers in Europe by a third, which would return force levels to those preceding Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Foreman also observes that US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told the Ankara summit the review’s results were not predetermined, while linking the review to what he characterised as European resistance to unrestricted American access to air stations during operations against Iran.
Concluding, Foreman writes: “The central question for the review is not how many American troops remain in Europe, but which military functions the US should continue to perform itself and which Europeans must provide for themselves in the future.”
Trump’s rude awakening about NATO members hiding behind US military strength was, in the main part, a much-needed kick up the proverbial. The results have been very interesting, as the military industry in Europe is changing up a gear or two, resulting in an explosion of new technologies to revolutionise the modern battlefront. A storm of new weapon orders are flooding into industry and this has resulted in thousands of new jobs, so thanks, Donald, for once you were right. A rebalance of US forces in Europe is probably long overdue, yet I can’t help thinking it will all fall back to type once Trump is gone.