US troops and NATO cash on the line as Trump warns allies

The Pentagon has cancelled a brigade rotation to Poland and plans fewer troops in Germany, and diplomats fear more after the midterms. The White House points to the 5 percent spending deal.

President Donald Trump has warned at a campaign rally that the United States could leave NATO if European allies do not "find their way". "We will have no choice but to leave", he said on 20 October. Five NATO diplomats say European allies fear he could cut US military support for Europe if Republicans lose the midterm elections.

Some of that fear is already fact. The Pentagon has cancelled an armoured brigade rotation to Poland and plans cuts of up to 5,000 troops, most of them in Germany. Three NATO diplomats told Politico the deeper worry is a lame-duck Trump pulling thousands more troops out. He could use the Pentagon's review of the US military presence in Europe to fix his foreign policy legacy, they said.

NATO diplomats say Trump could cut US contributions to NATO common funding and limit the PURL scheme for buying US arms for Ukraine. The same diplomats say he could deepen ties with Russia, and tie troop deployments and European security to a broader agreement with Putin. Jennifer Kavanagh at the defence department says the hardest capabilities for Europe to replace would be air defence, electronic warfare, intelligence and reconnaissance, aerial refuelling and some logistics.

The White House rejects that picture. It says Trump has done more for NATO than anyone else, pointing to the deal to raise defence spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035. It also points to a bigger US military presence in Greenland and efforts to end Russia's war. "Usually what happens to lame-duck presidents is a mix of venting frustrations and adventurism in foreign policy", a senior European defence official told Politico. In the official's view, attacking NATO seems a consistent part of the Trump worldview.

Not everyone in Europe thinks it will come to that. Montenegrin Defense Minister Dragan Krapović said talk of Trump leaving NATO has never materialised. "We have had speculations all the time about Trump... coming out of NATO; this has not happened so far", he said. Congress holds the final say on troop numbers, and US law sets a floor of 76,000 in Europe.