{"id":1182,"date":"2026-05-26T15:39:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T15:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arabnewsmonitor.com\/2026\/05\/26\/us-plans-to-slash-nato-contributions-spiegel\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T15:39:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T15:39:51","slug":"us-plans-to-slash-nato-contributions-spiegel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/?p=1182","title":{"rendered":"US plans to slash NATO contributions \u2013 Spiegel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington will reportedly make fewer jets, warships, and drones available to the bloc\u2019s European members<\/strong><\/p>\n

The US has told NATO\u2019s European members that it will reduce its military contributions to the bloc as Washington\u2019s military planners set their sights on China, Der Spiegel reported on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Delivered by senior Pentagon adviser Alexander Velez-Green at a confidential NATO meeting in Brussels last week, the message from Washington marks the latest step in US President Donald Trump\u2019s slow disengagement from Europe.<\/p>\n

Trump has reportedly drawn up a \u201cnaughty and nice<\/a>\u201d<\/em> list of NATO members based on their support for his policies, and earlier this month announced that he would withdraw 5,000 US troops from Germany.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"Donald
The slow American retreat from Europe has already begun<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

According to Der Spiegel, Velez-Green told NATO members that the US will drastically reduce its commitments to the \u2018NATO Force Model\u2019 \u2013 the contingent of troops and equipment that the bloc can deploy on short notice.<\/p>\n

The US will cut the number of fighter jets available to NATO by a third, and significantly reduce the number of strategic bombers and warships, the newspaper reported. NATO will also receive no American submarines or drones, leaving its European members to provide this hardware themselves, Velez-Green reportedly said.<\/p>\n

It is unclear how many \u2013 if any \u2013 US troops will be pulled from the NATO Force Model.<\/p>\n

The announcement reportedly shocked the Europeans at the meeting, who had predicted more minor and gradual cuts. Now, Der Spiegel claimed, the US expects them to have a plan in place to fill the gap before the bloc\u2019s annual summit in T\u00fcrkiye this July.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"FILE
Trump gifts Polish president 5,000 more US troops<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

However, the move comes amid a broader scaling back of the US military presence in Europe, where more than 80,000 US troops were stationed in 2025. The US has maintained a permanent presence there since the end of World War II, but Pentagon sources told Der Spiegel that they want to scale this presence back in preparation for a potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific region.<\/p>\n

At a meeting in Sweden last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NATO foreign ministers that \u201cthere are going to be eventually less US troops in Europe than there have historically been.<\/em>
<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have obligations in the Indo-Pacific; we have obligations in the Middle East; we have obligations in the Western Hemisphere,\u201d<\/em> Rubio told reporters, adding that the US wants to position its forces to fight \u201ca two-front conflict\u201d<\/em> if necessary.<\/p>\n

While Rubio maintained that \u201cthese are not political decisions,\u201d<\/em> Trump has explicitly politicized the deployment of US troops in Europe. After pulling American service members from Germany amid a spat with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the US president announced that he would send an additional 5,000 troops to Poland, \u201cbased on the successful election\u201d<\/em> of conservative President Karol Nawrocki.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington will reportedly make fewer jets, warships, and drones available to the bloc\u2019s European members…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}