US Plan to Shrink NATO Crisis Forces Raises Stakes for Ankara Summit
By Bosphorus News Geopolitics Desk
The Trump administration is preparing to formally notify European NATO members that the United States will reduce the pool of military forces and capabilities it would make available to the alliance in a major crisis or war, a move that lands seven weeks before NATO leaders gather in Türkiye.
Reuters reported that the notification is expected at a NATO defence policy meeting in Brussels on May 22, citing three sources familiar with the matter. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed the broad direction on May 19, describing the changes as part of "a comprehensive, multi-layered process" focused on the U.S. force posture in Europe.
The precise composition of forces assigned under the NATO Force Model, the classified planning framework that specifies what U.S. capabilities Europe can count on in wartime, is not being disclosed. Reuters cited sources describing the planned reduction as significant.
The timing gives the issue direct relevance for Türkiye. NATO leaders are due to meet in Ankara on July 7 and 8, the alliance's first summit on Turkish soil since Istanbul in 2004. The reported U.S. adjustment turns that summit into more than a discussion over defence spending targets. It places deployable capability, force generation and Europe's ability to carry more of its own conventional defence at the centre of the Ankara agenda.
What Has Already Been Cut
The expected wartime commitment reduction is separate from, but concurrent with, a series of force-presence decisions the Trump administration has already announced.
In recent weeks, the Pentagon cancelled the planned deployment to Poland of the U.S. Army's 2nd Armoured Brigade Combat Team, a roughly 4,000-strong rotational force from Fort Hood, Texas, that had already begun moving to Europe when the mission was terminated. A long-range fires battalion scheduled to deploy to Germany later this year was also cancelled.
The combined effect brings the announced reduction to approximately 5,000 troops. General Alexus Grynkewich, who commands U.S. European Command and serves as Supreme Allied Commander Europe, confirmed the figure at a NATO press conference in Brussels on May 19.
Grynkewich said the current plan would not adversely affect the alliance's ability to defend its eastern flank. He also said further reductions should "absolutely" be expected over the coming years as European allies build their own conventional defence capabilities.
U.S. forces in Europe currently stand at about 76,000, their highest level since the Cold War, after the American military posture was reinforced following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. U.S. law restricts any reduction below that level unless the administration submits an assessment to Congress and certifies that the move would not harm U.S. or NATO security interests.
Rutte Frames the Shift
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte tried to contain the political impact of the U.S. adjustment ahead of the Helsingborg foreign ministers meeting. Speaking in Brussels on May 20, he said U.S. troop changes in Europe would be "gradual and structured" and would not affect NATO's defence plans.
Rutte framed the broader challenge as one of burden distribution and capability delivery. He said the question was no longer whether allies needed to do more, but how quickly they could convert commitments into military capabilities.
"The question is no longer whether we need to do more," Rutte said. "The question is how quickly Allies can turn commitments into capabilities."
That formulation sits close to the message Türkiye's Foreign Ministry said Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan would carry to Helsingborg: that the Ankara Summit should reaffirm NATO unity and solidarity, while focusing on the conversion of rising defence spending into operational capacity and unrestricted transatlantic defence industry cooperation.
The overlap between Washington's force reduction logic and Türkiye's summit agenda is politically important. Reuters linked the Force Model adjustment directly to the Pentagon policy team led by Elbridge Colby, the U.S. Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, describing it as a key priority ahead of the Ankara Summit.
Colby had already outlined the broader doctrine in Brussels in February, arguing that European allies must assume primary responsibility for their own conventional defence. The United States, he said, would continue to provide extended nuclear deterrence and more limited conventional support, while Europe would be expected to lead on conventional forces.
The Ankara Calculation
The reduction in U.S. wartime commitments to NATO is the structural backdrop against which the July summit is being prepared. European allies face one question: what replaces the capacity Washington is scaling back? Türkiye faces the same question from a different position.
Türkiye is the alliance's second-largest standing military by personnel. It sits on NATO's southern flank, borders the Black Sea security environment, faces the Middle East crisis belt and has become a major defence producer in drones, armoured platforms, naval systems, missiles and electronic warfare.
Ankara is therefore trying to present itself as a capability provider at a moment when the alliance is being forced to move beyond spending language. The same message was visible at EFES-2026, where Bosphorus News reported that Türkiye displayed TCG Anadolu, Bayraktar TB3 and KARGU drone swarms before delegations from 50 countries.
Türkiye has also proposed a 1.2 billion dollar NATO military fuel pipeline running through Turkish, Bulgarian and Romanian territory, a project aimed at addressing logistics vulnerabilities on the alliance's eastern and southern routes. If Washington makes fewer conventional forces available in a crisis, the movement of fuel, ammunition and heavy equipment across allied territory becomes more than a technical logistics issue.
Germany's planned Patriot deployment to Türkiye gives the same debate an air-defence layer. The deployment, which Bosphorus News covered as part of the Ankara Summit and southern-flank air defence picture, is expected to begin from late June, with about 150 German troops replacing an outgoing U.S. unit.
Those examples do not mean Türkiye can replace the United States inside NATO. No European ally can. The issue is whether NATO can build a wider set of usable allied capabilities as Washington reduces the forces it earmarks for European crises.
From Spending Targets to Forces
The U.S. plan intersects with a wider European problem. Many NATO countries have increased defence budgets, but years of underinvestment left gaps in ammunition stocks, air defence density, industrial surge capacity, mobility corridors, heavy formations and long-range fires.
That is why the Ankara Summit is becoming a capability test. Allies will want language on unity. Washington will want a stronger European contribution. Eastern and southern flank countries will want credible forces, not only future spending curves. Türkiye will want its defence industry, geography and operational weight recognised as part of NATO's answer.
A senior NATO diplomat told Reuters that despite the Force Model revisions, there remains an understanding inside the alliance that the United States would still come to Europe's aid if the continent faced serious difficulty. That understanding is political at the level of force availability, even if NATO's Article 5 commitment remains the alliance's legal core.
The reported U.S. force adjustment does not mean NATO is collapsing. It means the alliance is entering a phase in which American conventional support is likely to become more selective, more conditional and more openly tied to allied delivery.
That is the pressure Ankara will inherit in July. The summit's measure will not be the strength of its unity language alone. It will be whether NATO can begin to answer a more concrete question: what forces, factories and supply chains will carry the alliance if the United States makes less available in the next crisis.
***Sources: Reuters, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, NATO SACEUR General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Turkish Foreign Ministry, Euronews, Stars and Stripes, Defense News, Bloomberg, Military Times and Bosphorus News reporting.