Trump mused about cutting troops in Europe by a third to send a message to NATO
Ankara, Turkey (CNN) — As President Donald Trump was raging during a White House meeting this spring that fellow members of the NATO alliance had refused to join his military operation in Iran, he had a thought.
What if he cut American forces in Europe by a third, he asked, according to two people familiar with the conversation. Would that send the so-called allies the right message?
Around the time Trump floated his withdrawal idea, the Pentagon abruptly canceled two US military deployments to Europe and ordered the removal of other personnel from the continent.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth planned to announce at a June NATO meeting even steeper cuts that could add up to the one-third reduction Trump raised, according to two people familiar with the matter. But the plan changed after consultations with other senior administration officials, and Hegseth instead unveiled a six-month review of US forces in Europe.
“It’s a review that some countries will fail and others will pass with flying colors,” he warned at the time.
As the president heads to Turkey this week for a hotly anticipated NATO summit, his fury — and his threats — are straining the 77-year-old alliance. Never particularly enthusiastic in pledging US support for Europe’s defense, Trump has grown even more skeptical in the last 12 months, claiming America’s oldest allies weren’t there when he needed them after he launched a war in Iran.
He has never explicitly ruled out attempting to withdraw from NATO, and consistently questions its value for the United States, which he argues is underwriting Europe’s security.
Trump has also threatened to seize Greenland from a fellow NATO member, and has shown periodic deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who some European officials fear could be planning operations in NATO territory as a test of the alliance’s resolve.
‘Time for our allies to step up’
That has all generated a fraught atmosphere for this week’s summit, which Trump has said he is attending begrudgingly. In a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte last month, he said he was going only because it is being hosted in Turkey’s capital by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whom he considers a friend. A source familiar with the matter said it was privately indicated to Trump and his team that not going to the summit, despite the US leader’s reasoning, would be disrespectful to Erdoğan.
“This Ankara summit is really the time for our allies to step up, and I know that that’s what President Trump is expecting,” said Trump’s ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker.
European leaders hope to exit the Ankara meeting without a major explosion, planning new defense pledges to allay Trump’s anger. Rutte also tried to smooth over any discord during his June visit to the White House.
But in worried private conversations over the past week, many officials said they could not be sure whether the summit would go smoothly given the president’s sour mood. The president has complained angrily behind closed doors about the lack of NATO support, and that rhetoric has spilled into his public remarks.
“Ridiculous for the U.S.A. to continue along this one sided path when the relationship is not reciprocal. They were not there for us!!!” Trump wrote on social media in the days ahead of the summit.
European leaders have balked at Trump’s criticism, noting they were not consulted before the Iran war began. Many have pledged military help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, though tensions in the critical waterway have slowed a full restoration of commercial traffic.
Senior American officials said the strait would be a point of discussion in Ankara, though they voiced skepticism that European nations had the military capabilities to contribute meaningfully to any efforts.
Trump’s dispute with European leaders did not derail a Group of Seven summit in France last month. Instead, Trump — buoyed by positive progress in Iran talks — seemed to get on well even with counterparts he’d spent the previous months castigating.
But shortly after leaving, he renewed a feud with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who he claimed had “begged” him for a photo. She accused him of fabricating the story and, instead of letting the tension die down, on Sunday he suggested he needed a “restraining order” against her. One US official said the strained dynamic between the two formerly friendly leaders was adding another layer of uncertainty to the summit.
And during his meeting with Rutte in the Oval Office, Trump renewed his litany of complaints about NATO allies.
“Just be loyal. I just want their loyalty. We don’t need their money, we don’t need anything. We have the most powerful military in the world, by far, but I just want loyalty,” he said.
Difficulties in appeasing Trump
Rutte, who has spent the past year and a half working with mixed success to manage Trump’s moods, attempted to cushion the president’s hostility with charts showing an increase in European defense spending, which he attributed to Trump’s pressure.
“This chart is about the Trump trillion,” he explained at one point.
He gently pushed back on the US leader’s anger over Iran, insisting that “there have been isolated cases about which you are really disappointed but, generally speaking, your European allies have been there.”
Rutte, a former prime minister of the Netherlands whose fawning praise of Trump has earned him occasional ridicule, used a similar tactic at last year’s NATO summit in The Hague, and it mostly worked. Trump departed praising European leaders and reaffirming his commitment to NATO’s collective defense agreement.
European officials aspire to a repeat in Ankara, but such an outcome appears to many like a fading hope. Trump has not given up his designs on Greenland, repeatedly arguing the US needs it for national security, despite a scheme devised by Rutte in January to scale up European defenses on the self-governing Danish territory.
“As of now, the only solution that we found as to how to solve that is with the United States acquiring Greenland, but we’ll continue to explore other options to address those considerations,” a senior US official said before the summit.
Preparing for a less-involved US force
Over the last several months, the US has withdrawn troops quicker than many European officials imagined, even though Trump has been threatening for years to reduce the American footprint on the continent.
While Trump this spring appeared caught off guard by a Pentagon announcement it was halting a scheduled troop rotation through Poland, he upheld a decision to pull 5,000 troops from Germany. Chancellor Friedrich Merz had said shortly before the move that the United States was being “humiliated” in its war with Iran.
“There should be no surprise that we’re doing a posture review, or surprise that that posture review very well may lead to us adjusting our posture,” a senior administration official said before the Ankara summit.
Still, the back-and-forth has confused some Europeans, who are trying to plan for a day when the United States no longer provides the bulk of the continent’s security.
“The summit provides an opportunity for the United States to specify what it plans to pull out of Europe and consult with allies on how capability gaps can be filled. The question is whether the Trump administration is prepared to do that,” wrote Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a recent discussion on NATO. “The allies need clarity from Washington on what will stay, what will go, and when. And for that to happen, Washington needs to make up its mind.”
Many fear any changes to the American military posture could embolden Russia, whose offensive in Ukraine has stalled. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend a leaders dinner in Ankara, but won’t participate in the summit’s meetings — a signal that Kyiv’s ambitions to one day join the alliance remain unrealized. He will, however, meet individually with Trump on Wednesday.
Trump, whose attention was diverted by the war in Iran, has recently sounded impressed by Zelensky’s ability to keep up the fight against a much larger adversary. European nations plan to pledge tens of billions of euros in military support for Ukraine to show Trump they’re committed to financing the fight.
Whether any of it works in keeping the peace at this week’s conference remains to be seen.
The-CNN-Wire
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CNN’s Haley Britzky contributed to this report.
