NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Wednesday the U.S. cutting the number of troops and equipment it would provide to traditional allies in the event of an attack will not have an immediate impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not about where forces and assets are currently located,\u201d Rutte told reporters in Brussels, according to The Associated Press<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s about who would do what if our defense plans were activated.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. informed European allies earlier this month it would reduce the amount of fighter jets and warships it would deploy for NATO\u2019s response in the early stages of a conflict, The New York Times reported last week<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The proposed drawdowns, according to the report, include reducing the number of F-16 and F-15E fighter jets from roughly 150 to 100, reducing P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft from 26 to 15, and cutting all eight aerial refueling tanker jets previously available to Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last year, NATO countries made a commitment<\/a> to invest 5 percent of gross domestic product annually on defense spending. President Trump had previously pushed for NATO to not rely as heavily on American military support.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rutte also said Wednesday that U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO\u2019s top commander, believes allies either have \u201cor will have in the near future\u201d enough in their arsenals to compensate for the gaps left by a U.S. drawdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe overall picture is looking good,\u201d Rutte said, according to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n But a draft of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released by House Republicans<\/a> on Tuesday would extend restrictions on the drawdown<\/a> of U.S. forces from Europe and the Korean Peninsula.<\/p>\n It would maintain the base amount, set by last year\u2019s NDAA, of 76,000 U.S. troops in Europe and 28,500 in Korea. The legislation would also bar the Trump administration from removing more than $500,000 in military technology from Europe.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Wednesday the U.S. cutting the number of troops and equipment it would provide…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1297,2302,299,7,2303,49],"class_list":["post-2756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-brussels","tag-gen-alexus-grynkewich","tag-mark-rutte","tag-nato","tag-president-trump","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756","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=2756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}