NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte moved on Wednesday to calm anxieties over Washington’s decision to scale back the forces it pledges to the alliance in a crisis, insisting the adjustment did not signal an American withdrawal from Europe. Speaking on the eve of a defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Rutte acknowledged that the United States had revised its contributions to the NATO Force Model — the mechanism that determines which member provides what capabilities if collective defence plans are activated — but argued the move had been “cast as a problem, as the U.S. pulling away from its allies. That is not the reality.” The US, he stressed, remains firmly committed to the alliance, even as it expects European nations to assume “primary responsibility” for conventional defence on the continent.

The American recalibration is nonetheless substantial. Viewed from Washington, the shift is designed to jolt allies out of what senior NATO officials have privately described as an “unhealthy dependency” on US enablers. According to military planning details that have circulated among allied capitals, roughly one-third of the US fighter-jet contingent assigned to European theatres will be withdrawn, alongside significant reductions in aerial refuelling tankers, bomber squadrons, and naval assets including missile-armed submarines and carrier strike groups that have long underpinned deterrence in the North and Baltic Seas. The cuts do not alter the day-to-day posture of permanently based American forces, but they reshape the pool of high-end capabilities that NATO commanders could call upon in a major contingency.

European allies and Canada have already begun filling the void, Rutte said, pointing to a surge in defence investment that he characterised as “staggering.” In 2025 alone, non-US NATO members increased core defence spending by more than $90 billion — a jump of almost 20 percent in a single year — with further increases already programmed for 2026. The Secretary-General said he expected allies to present “clear, concrete and credible plans” to meet the target of spending 5 percent of GDP on defence by 2035, a goal agreed at last year’s Hague summit. Analysts in London note that while the headline figures are impressive, the real test will be whether the new money translates swiftly into the specific high-readiness forces and strategic enablers — airlift, air-to-air refuelling, intelligence platforms — that the US is dialling back.

The Brussels meeting will also address the future of support for Ukraine, where a similar division of labour is taking shape. Rutte confirmed that the United States would continue to provide essential military aid to Kyiv, but made clear that the financial burden would increasingly fall on European shoulders. This dual-track dynamic — Washington stepping back from the front line of European security while remaining the ultimate backstop — is likely to dominate the agenda through to the alliance’s next summit in Ankara. For Moscow, the internal rebalancing will be read closely for any sign of operational fissures, but the near-term trajectory points not toward transatlantic divorce, but toward a more heavily armed Europe operating inside a US-guaranteed framework.