The Trump administration has sent an unmistakable message to Europe: You’re on your own.
In three dizzying months, the White House has reversed decades’ worth of American foreign policy, pledged to scale back its presence on the continent, and pushed to wrap up Russia’s war in Ukraine, even if that might mean handing Ukrainian land to Moscow.
The new reality is one to which Europe is still adjusting. But 80 years to the week after American and European allies forced the surrender of Nazi Germany, a future in which the continent is left alone to defend itself from the Russian menace is no longer hypothetical.
“Now, all of a sudden, after the invasion (of) Ukraine, we realize that peace must be defended.”
A breakneck race is underway in Europe’s NATO-member states to ready the continent in case of confrontation with Russia. The race is winnable: Europe boasts militaries large and expensive enough to at least partially plug the hole Washington is threatening to leave.
But armies in Western Europe need a serious influx of funds and expertise to prepare themselves for the worst-case scenario.
In recent years, Britain, France and Germany have pumped funds into their aging militaries after a plateau in spending during the middle of the 2010s.
But it could be several years until the impact of those funds are felt on the front lines. Troop numbers, weaponry and military readiness have waned in Western Europe since the end of the Cold War. “The high level of attrition in the Ukraine War has painfully highlighted European countries’ current shortcomings,” the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank, wrote in a blunt review of Europe’s forces last year.
Nations nearer the Russian border are moving faster. The Trump administration has hailed Poland as a paragon of self-sufficiency. “We see Poland as the model ally on the continent: willing to invest not just in their defense, but in our shared defense and the defense of the continent,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in Warsaw during the first European bilateral meeting of Trump’s second term.
But Poland’s rapid escalation in defense spending has more to do with its own, generations-old tensions with Russia than with a desire to earn a place in Trump’s good graces. Warsaw and Washington are at odds on the conflict in Ukraine; Poland has for years warned Europe of the threat posed by Russia, and has steadfastly supported its neighbor as it defends territory from Putin’s advances.
The US has stationed troops in Europe since the end of the Cold War, and their numbers have grown since Russia’s full-scale invasion, with around 80,000 on the continent last year, according to a Congressional report. But the deployment is still far smaller than at the height of the Cold War, when nearly half a million American troops were stationed in Europe.
For decades, American foreign policy emphasized the importance of those deployments not just to European security, but to its own. Troops on the continent provide forward defense, help train allied forces, and manage nuclear warheads.
Now, the future of those deployments is not clear. European leaders have publicly urged Washington not to reduce numbers, but Trump, Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance have all made clear their intention to strengthen the US military posture in the South China Sea.
Today, most US land and air bases are located in Germany, Italy and Poland. US bases in central Europe provide a counterweight to the Russian threat, while naval and aerial locations in Turkey, Greece and Italy also support missions in the Middle East.
The locations serve as “a crucial foundation for NATO operations, regional deterrence, and global power projection,” according to the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis think tank.
The most important deterrent Europe holds, however, is its nuclear warheads.
During the early stages of Russia’s war, President Vladimir Putin repeatedly prompted worldwide alarm by hinting at the use of a nuclear weapon. That fear subsided after the war became bogged down in Ukraine’s east.
But nuclear deterrence is an area on which Europe is heavily reliant on the US. Britain and France – the two European countries with nuclear weapons – have only about a tenth of Russia’s arsenal between them. But the American nuclear war chest roughly matches Russia’s, and dozens of those US warheads are located in Europe.