Hours after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused NATO's European members of, "freeloading," and warned that the US would be pulling back its forces, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius was photographed with a large grin on his face.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov had just shown him imagery of a Moscow oil refinery exploding during an aerial strike, as the two met on the sidelines of the German- and British-chaired committee coordinating allied weapons support to Kyiv.
Last week's NATO defence ministers' gathering in Brussels was just the latest in a series of events redefining relations between Europe and Washington.
A year and a half into Donald Trump's US presidency, the alliance's European planners and strategists are learning to cope with frequent and unheralded pronouncements or changes shrinking the US commitment to Europe.
But although they have accelerated efforts to reduce Europe's dependence, the alliance's continued reliance on the US support and coordination systems around which it was built still leaves them in an awkward situation as NATO leaders prepare to meet in Ankara on July 7.
US announcements and actions have come thick and fast throughout the first half of 2026.
According to a leak to the German newspaper Die Welt, the US has already told allies it is now slashing the number of fighter jets it allocates to NATO from 150 to 100, removing eight refuelling tankers, reducing maritime patrol aircraft from 26 to 15 and removing one aircraft carrier battle group and at least one cruise missile submarine.
Questions remain over the future of the US Army’s V Corps, which has had a forward unit based in Poland since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with the assumption that other elements of that formation would head to Europe in the event of a Russian attack on NATO.
Polish authorities were alarmed by reports that the Pentagon had cancelled plans for the rotational deployment of some 4,000 US troops there, only for Trump in May to say the US would be sending "an additional 5,000 troops".
It was unclear whether there was a connection to the 5,000 troops that the Pentagon on May 1 said it was withdrawing from Germany.
The US also quietly sent a detachment of 15 Abrams tanks to Estonia late last year, a reminder to Moscow that any conventional attack against the Baltic state might draw in the US from the outset.
Speaking at the US Naval War College in May, Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby said Washington remained committed to a strategy of “deterrence by denial”, using limited forward US forces, hi-tech systems and the support of allies, which he did not name, as well as the broader threat of the US nuclear deterrent to deter potential enemies from military aggression.
He appeared to be referring to the Pacific and the Persian Gulf as well as Europe.
But Colby also warned that the US must shape its current and likely future strategies to, "keep the cost and risks of conflict in rational correlations to what Americans actually have at stake".
To some extent, Ukraine's success in fighting Russia with now mainly European backing, notably from Britain, France and Germany, is giving European defence leaders more confidence in their own potential.
That real-time collaboration with Kyiv is being fed directly back into the process of shaping arsenals and infrastructure for 2029, the date when NATO planners say Russia - which denies any such intent - might be ready for an eastward push.
Kyiv has no long-range US bomber support, but is now using far cheaper drones and missiles to strike deep inside Russia anyway.
For most current European governments and defence chiefs, Ukraine's example offers the most persuasive path, whatever the future dynamic of the alliance with the US, and perhaps also some comfort for the unravelling of a planned multi-billion-euro Franco-German fighter project.
French and German officials in particular have talked up the need to find European-only solutions to fight without US support if necessary.
German officials are keen to build up as much military resource as possible by 2029, and Berlin has heavily expanded its defence budget, although others such as Britain have been more sluggish.
This week, NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Air Chief Marshal Johnny Stringer told reporters there was a "window of risk" that Russia's setbacks in Ukraine might prompt it to seek to regain the initiative by threatening eastern NATO states while the alliance was still building up its arsenal.
But a major problem is, as yet, unaddressed.
As International Institute for Strategic Studies senior land warfare fellow Ruben Stewart put it "the implicit assumption in much European defence planning" has always been that, "US enablers underpinned command, integration and operational reach”.
"US participation effectively acts as the alliance's operating system: linking sensors to shooters, synchronising effects...and providing the data, communications and planning architecture,” he wrote in a commentary last week. “Without it, European forces would remain capable but more loosely coupled.”
To make matters worse, European officials have increasingly complained that Washington does not share the information feeds that power the Maven Smart System, built by the US data integration giant Palantir, which formed the backbone of US targeting during this year's attack on Iran.
At bottom, no one really knows how any future US administration might handle that dynamic in a future crisis.
And yet, when this week’s British Army-run Land Warfare Conference in London welcomed army chiefs from across Europe as well as Canada, for the first time in memory, no US official turned up.
In his opening address on Tuesday, the head of the British Army, Chief of the General Staff General Sir Roly Walker, made a point of stressing that British commanders had been deliberately tasked by US and NATO land commander General Chris Donahue to help define the “rules of the road” on data sharing between Washington and other allies.
Donahue was arguably the second most important US officer on the continent when it comes to NATO’s still-developing high-tech war plans.
"Was" because, on Wednesday, The Atlantic and several other US news outlets reported that Hegseth was firing him.
Later that day, Trump complained to reporters about several NATO nations as Secretary General Mark Rutte sat beside him, saying all he wanted from them was "loyalty".
The contradictions are unlikely to be resolved in Ankara.
Trump has already said he would not be going at all if it were not for his respect for Turkey's president. And, like its predecessor last year in The Hague, the summit is being kept short and has been deliberately designed to leave the minimum opportunity for public disagreement.
But none of that means there won't be plenty to discuss in private.
(By Peter Apps, Editing by Kevin Liffey)
