Pentagon cuts NATO air and naval commitments in Europe

NATO's 2022 Strategic Concept identified Russia as the most significant and direct threat to allied security and addressed China as a challenge to allied interests for the first time. After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, NATO leaders moved from expeditionary crisis management back toward territorial defence, including a larger readiness model. The 2014 Wales Summit had set the earlier 2% defence-spending guideline after Russia annexed Crimea. NATO's 2025 Hague declaration then raised the ambition to 5% of GDP by 2035, split between core defence and broader security-related investment.

This is part of a larger redistribution of military attention from the Euro-Atlantic theatre toward China and the Indo-Pacific. Russia remains the immediate European threat in NATO planning, but U.S. strategy increasingly treats China as the long-term pacing challenge. That creates a two-front burden-sharing problem: Europe must deter Russia while Washington preserves capacity elsewhere.

The issue became timely because the Pentagon has now detailed reductions to NATO planners after months of warnings that Europe was no longer Washington's top security priority. The July 2026 NATO summit gives allies a deadline to show how they intend to cover the gaps.