“When our interests align, we act together with focused resolve,” he said. “When our interests diverge, we adjust pragmatically without the drama or the moralising. I think Western Europe might take note.”<\/p>\n
“Europe and \u200bNATO have some big decisions to make,” he said.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump’s administration has repeatedly accused European governments of underinvesting in \u200btheir militaries and relying too heavily on U.S. protection, while urging both Europe and Asian allies \u2060to boost defence spending<\/a> to 3.5% of GDP.Washington announced plans<\/a> in May to pull 5,000 troops out of Germany, and Trump has threatened \u200bto pull out of NATO.<\/p>\n A senior NATO official sought to downplay the U.S. troop withdrawal, saying it was already planned and that \u200bthe alliance’s cohesion was unaffected.<\/p>\n “In a mature alliance, if one ally which in this case is the principal stakeholder needs to redirect some power somewhere else, he can do so, and the others must be able to step in,” said Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, chair of the NATO Military Committee.<\/p>\n Nils \u200bHilmer, state secretary at Germany’s Federal Ministry of Defence, said Berlin was accelerating military investment regardless of future U.S. deployments.<\/p>\n “What we know \u200bfor sure… is that there’s going to be shifts in that field,” he said. “That’s why we are about to take the security in our \u200cown hands.”<\/p>\n European \u2060ministers also used the forum to reassure Asian partners that NATO remained credible beyond its immediate neighbourhood.<\/p>\n “Our credibility in Asia also depends on our robustness in Europe, defending Ukraine in the face of the Russian aggression,” said French Defence Minister Catherine Vautrin in a speech to delegates.<\/p>\n Other European defence ministers argued that security theatres are increasingly intertwined.<\/p>\n “The European Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific theatres are becoming \u200binseparable,” said Tore Sandvik, Norway’s minister \u200bof defence, noting that North \u2060Korean troops were fighting in Ukraine.<\/p>\n “The U.S. will be occupied in more theatres,” he said.<\/p>\n But for all the criticism from the Pentagon, several U.S. Senators and members of the House of Representatives \u200bsaid they were seeking to reassure European and Asian allies that they had bipartisan support from \u200bCongress.<\/p>\n “I’ve heard the \u2060same anxiety from everyone, not just in the region,” said U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth. “I’ve actually got NATO allies worried about America’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific.”<\/p>\n Still, scepticism among other delegates lingers over Europe’s pace of change on investing in their collective security.<\/p>\n “Europe has to learn how to \u2060become a \u200bplayer,” said Pavlo Klimkin, non-resident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and a \u200bformer Ukrainian minister of foreign affairs. “There is no way around it. But it could be extremely beneficial for their partnership with the United States, because the States \u200bwould respect such European drive.”<\/p>\n Reporting by Gregor Stuart Hunter, Rae Wee and Jun Yuan Yong; Editing by Greg Torode and Shri Navaratnam.<\/p>\n Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab<\/a><\/p>\n Purchase Licensing Rights<\/a> Gregor Stuart Hunter is a correspondent reporting on breaking news on finance and markets in Asia, based in Singapore.\u00a0During prior postings in Hong Kong, Taipei and Abu Dhabi, Gregor previously worked for Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal, and wrote for The Guardian, Monocle and Fortune,\u00a0among others. He is a CFA Charterholder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pentagon chief criticises “moralising” in European capitalsNATO official downplays U.S. troop withdrawal from GermanyCongressional delegations seek to reassure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[801,802,816,821,820,803,804,832,822,823,834,826,837,828,824,841,843,842,844,829,833,827,839,825,831,838,836,840,835,830,805,819,817,806,807,808,809,810,800,818,7,811,845,846,812,813,814,799,292,130,815],"class_list":["post-1029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-aer","tag-aero","tag-amers","tag-asia","tag-asxpac","tag-cwp","tag-def","tag-destafa","tag-destauf","tag-destcsa","tag-destdnp","tag-destg","tag-destgns","tag-destj","tag-destlby","tag-destocatpm","tag-destouktpm","tag-destoustpm","tag-destouswdm","tag-destpge","tag-destpsc","tag-destrast","tag-destrbn","tag-destreulb","tag-destrnp","tag-destrws","tag-destrwsa","tag-destseatp","tag-destucdptest","tag-destz","tag-dip","tag-emea","tag-europ","tag-gen","tag-hrep","tag-indg","tag-inds","tag-intag","tag-mtpix","tag-namer","tag-nato","tag-news1","tag-packageus-top-news","tag-packageworld-news","tag-pol","tag-potus","tag-secur","tag-topicworld-nato","tag-us","tag-war","tag-wash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Gregor](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/https:\/\/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com\/reuters\/H24NV3AFCZCWPC463OG3JRYY7U.jpg\")
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