US relinquishing NATO command ‘not imminent, not unthinkable’

The potential for the United States to relinquish its long-standing role as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) would represent a seismic shift in the alliance’s structure, but such a move remains unlikely in the short term, Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman told MPs this week.

Speaking before the Defence Committee on 1 April, Freedman was asked about reports—most notably from NBC—that the Trump administration had considered removing the US from the SACEUR role or combining it with US Africa Command.

“It would be a tremendous shift for the Americans to hand over command,” Freedman said, cautioning that “we have some way to go before we are there.”

While acknowledging growing internal pressure within the Pentagon to hand over more responsibilities to European allies, he stressed that such a change would face stiff institutional resistance.

“You’ll see tremendous pushback in the Senate and certainly in the army. Armies don’t like giving up command posts,” he noted. “So long as the Americans are involved in European security, they will want what influence they have over it.”

Still, Freedman acknowledged that any serious cut to US force posture in Europe could eventually make continued American leadership at SACEUR harder to justify. “At some point, if you’re cutting your forces below a certain point, it would be very hard to explain why you’re holding on to the command.”

Asked directly by Committee Chair Tan Dhesi MP whether the move was imminent, Freedman replied: “I hope it is not imminent.”

The conversation then turned to whether Europe could, in the event of a diminished US presence, emerge as a “third great power” alongside the US and China. While acknowledging that such a shift would likely bring “short-term pain” for European states, Dhesi asked whether a truly unified and rearmed Europe might reach that status in the coming years.

Freedman was sceptical: “The Europeans don’t have the unity to think in those terms yet,” he said, noting that “Britain, France, Germany and Spain were the great powers of the past,” but the current political landscape is far more complex.

While China, he observed, does not mirror the traditional model of a globe-spanning great power, Europe lacks the political coherence required for such a role. “There used to be talk about the EU as a civil power… not so militaristic and so on,” he added.

Freedman concluded that while European nations may increasingly need to “do more on their own continent,” achieving global great power status—particularly in the military sense—remains distant.

Freedman is one of Britain’s foremost strategic thinkers and served as Professor of War Studies at King’s College London from 1982 to 2014. He was a key foreign policy adviser to successive UK governments and was appointed to the Iraq Inquiry panel in 2009. Known for his analysis of nuclear strategy, international conflict, and the evolution of military doctrine, his views continue to shape defence debates at the highest level.