Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in Romania was built to make Americans feel at home. Its streets are named Alabama, Ohio, Alaska and George Washington. The base has hosted US troops since 1999 and supported America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Last year, about half of the approximately 2,000 American troops in Romania, most of them living at the base, departed as the Trump administration began a radical realignment of the US military presence in Europe. In Romania, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation country bordering Ukraine, the departures caused alarm: MK, as the base is known, sits on the alliance’s eastern flank at a time when Russian drones have repeatedly crossed into NATO territory.
But when Reuters visited MK in July, the base told a more complicated story about US President Donald Trump’s effort to remake NATO.
Nine US KC-135 Stratotankers were parked there, deployed to refuel American jets and bombers during the Iran war. Their crews and support staff had partially offset the earlier troop departures, a reminder that Washington still relies heavily on European bases. More than two months later, the Stratotankers were still there.
That paradox sits at the centre of Trump’s confrontation with the 32-nation alliance. He has threatened troop cuts, badgered allies over defense spending and denounced European governments for refusing to unconditionally support the US-Israeli war against Iran. Yet a Reuters examination of US military operations in Europe found that the Trump administration continues to invest in key NATO military facilities and is relying on them to project power across Europe, the Middle East and beyond.
To assess the effects of Trump’s pressure campaign on NATO, Reuters interviewed more than 50 current and former Western officials, military officers, diplomats and defense experts, including senior Trump administration officials, congressional aides, and former US ambassadors to NATO.
Reuters journalists also visited bases used by NATO in Romania and Estonia, and observed NATO military exercises off the coast of North Carolina.
The reporting revealed an alliance under strain though not yet broken. Nine current and former US officials told Reuters that congressional Republicans and Democrats, along with powerful U.S. defense contractors with big European customers, have the political clout to block a US withdrawal from NATO – something Trump has repeatedly threatened to do.
Yet Trump’s attacks are damaging the 77-year-old alliance in ways that European and American strategists alike say are difficult to reverse. Europe is increasingly questioning America’s reliability as a security partner, Reuters found, and those doubts are now shaping defense spending, weapons procurement and long-term security planning across the continent.
Many of those interviewed described a slump in transatlantic trust that has weakened NATO’s central deterrent: Article 5, the pledge that an armed attack on one member will be treated as an attack on all. A failing NATO led by an unreliable US could be catastrophic for Europe’s security as the region confronts an aggressive and openly expansionist Russia along its eastern borders.
