Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered a formal review of U.S. troop deployments across Europe while publicly pressing NATO allies to assume greater responsibility for defending the continent. The move is reshaping how the alliance plans its strategy through 2026 and beyond.

Hegseth, sworn in as the 29th Secretary of Defense on January 25, 2025, has used a series of meetings with NATO counterparts to deliver a consistent message: European members must treat their own security as their primary concern, providing an "overwhelming share" of defense capacity rather than depending on the United States as a permanent backup. He first articulated this expectation in February 2025, and it has since become the central theme of Pentagon messaging on how military responsibility should be divided.

The force posture review—an examination of where and how many troops are stationed—follows that pressure campaign. When Hegseth addressed the question directly, he was careful to say that any repositioning of American forces should not be interpreted as the U.S. abandoning Europe. That distinction matters: European governments have spent months trying to figure out whether the new administration genuinely intends to reshape the transatlantic relationship or simply wants leverage in negotiations. The reassurance is genuine, but the underlying intent is also clear—the Pentagon is actively asking whether its current European footprint aligns with what Washington now considers its strategic priorities.

At the same time, Hegseth has continued to call NATO "the most successful defense alliance in history" while emphasizing that its survival depends on member states doing "far" more. His focus is on military capability—what he calls "hard power"—rather than the emotional or institutional bonds that hold the alliance together. This rhetorical balance—praising NATO while demanding structural changes—is intentional. It allows Washington to push for serious reform without explicitly threatening to leave the alliance.

The background to this pressure is worth understanding. NATO agreed in 2014 that member states should spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense. For years, that target was more of a goal than a requirement; most European members fell short. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, some countries—Poland and the Baltic states especially—have met or exceeded it. But progress across the alliance remains uneven. When Hegseth demands an "overwhelming share" of defense spending, he is asking for something beyond the 2 percent benchmark. He is signaling that the distribution of military leadership and responsibility needs to shift fundamentally, with Europe taking the lead rather than the United States.

For European defense planners, the implications of the force posture review are substantial and concrete. The U.S. currently stations well over 80,000 troops in Europe, a number higher than in the years before 2022. These troops do more than occupy territory—they provide deterrence functions that European militaries cannot quickly replicate. The U.S. brings advanced command-and-control systems, logistics networks, and high-end capabilities like long-range precision strikes and intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance (ISR) assets. Any real reduction in those forces, even if labeled as rebalancing rather than withdrawal, would require European NATO members to rapidly build new capabilities on timelines that most defense ministries have not yet planned for.

European responses have been divided. Countries that have already met or exceeded the 2 percent target—Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia—tend to see Hegseth's pressure as vindication of spending they were already committed to increasing. Countries still below the threshold face domestic political pushback: voters and parliaments resist large defense budgets without clear threats on the horizon. According to Reuters reporting, Hegseth has not shown much patience with those sensitivities, suggesting the Pentagon plans to apply pressure without diplomatic accommodation.

What matters more than the rhetoric will be what the force posture review actually produces. Such reviews can result in modest shifts—moving one brigade combat team here, rotating another there—or in significant changes to the permanent American military presence. Some options rely more on rotating troops in and out rather than maintaining a large permanent force, a model that costs less during peacetime but carries less visible deterrent weight. Moscow watches these decisions as closely as European capitals do, and the choice between these approaches carries real strategic meaning.

The direction Hegseth has set pushes European NATO members toward a fundamental reorientation: the idea that American security guarantees are not unconditional or automatic, but depend on Europeans demonstrating they will prioritize their own defense. American administrations have hinted at this for decades without really acting on it. Whether the alliance can absorb this kind of pressure without splitting apart will depend on how the Pentagon's review is actually carried out and how quickly those changes are implemented.