US Under Secretary for Defence Elbridge Colby on Thursday met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and the alliance’s ambassadors in Brussels as Washington reviews the presence of US troops in Europe.<\/p>\n
Washington wants input from allies “directly in writing,” Colby said, referring to a questionnaire the US recently sent to fellow NATO members.<\/p>\n
The review, announced in June by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has raised concerns about possible US troop withdrawals from Europe.<\/p>\n
The move is part of Washington’s push for a so-called “NATO 3.0,” under which European allies take primary responsibility for the conventional defence of Europe and provide the bulk of the forces required.<\/p>\n
Under the model, the US is to continue to provide the alliance with its nuclear deterrence while focusing its conventional military contribution to more limited and targeted capabilities.<\/p>\n
Europe would, however, remain “a critical interest for the United States,” Colby said, even as Washington’s priority has shifted to the Western Hemisphere and First Island Chain in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n
Colby did not give specific examples of the content of the questionnaire, but mentioned overflight flights as an issue where “there’s some things that we need to work out to make sense going forward.”<\/p>\n
Other questions include whether allies are prepared to take on greater responsibility within NATO’s command structure, according to NATO sources.<\/p>\n
Politically sensitive issues, including arms procurement from US companies and existing restrictions on US forces operating in Europe, are also addressed.<\/p>\n
Such restrictions angered Washington at the start of the Iran war, when some allies barred the US from using bases on their territory for military activities related to the conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Under Secretary for Defence Elbridge Colby on Thursday met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7138,492,47,164,299,287,328,3234,188],"class_list":["post-12088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-elbridge-a-colby","tag-elbridge-colby","tag-europe","tag-european-allies","tag-mark-rutte","tag-nato-allies","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-secretary-general-of-nato","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12088","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=12088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}