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The Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, has told European Nato defence ministers in Brussels that they need to step up their combat capabilities and take the lead in protecting their continent from the Russian threat.
The influential undersecretary for war, sent by the White House in place of his boss, Pete Hegseth, said the US would reduce conventional forces in Europe but insisted Washington remained committed to the military alliance.
Colby said Europe had to go “beyond inputs and intentions toward outputs and capabilities” as he sought to reset relations after last month’s damaging row over Greenland, which Donald Trump had demanded from Denmark.
“It means prioritising war-fighting effectiveness over bureaucratic and regulatory stasis. It means making hard choices about force structure, readiness, stockpiles and industrial capacity that reflect the realities of modern conflict rather than peacetime politics,” Colby told Nato allies on Thursday.
Last summer, Nato European members agreed to increase core defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 to reach US levels, but it is unclear what this increased militarisation will mean in practice.
Colby’s comments were made behind closed doors in a short speech to Nato’s 31 other members, at the start of a meeting of alliance defence ministers in Brussels. Unusually, they were released by the Pentagon shortly after delivery.
Though he emphasised that the US would continue to provide an “extended nuclear deterrent”, he said Washington’s forces – currently numbering about 85,000 in Europe – would be deployed “in a more limited and focused fashion”.
The undersecretary is one of the most vocal proponents in the Trump administration of shifting US military attention away from Europe. The “most consequential” interests for the US were in deterring China and in the Americas, he said, while Europe would have to take “the lead for its conventional defence”.
However, Colby also made clear the US “will continue to ready our forces to do our part” under Nato’s article 5, which states that an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all – a pledge that has at times been questioned by Trump.
Last month the US president made repeated efforts to force Denmark into handing over Greenland, with the White House at times indicating that it would not rule out using military force to capture the Arctic territory from its Nato ally.
Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general, sought to move on from the unprecedented row, arguing that an alliance of democracies would always have “debates and discussions”, and he said Colby’s remarks showed that the US was “anchored in Nato”.
“The good news is that this alliance always finds a way forward, to come together, to focus again on our overarching goal, which is to keep 1 billion people safe,” Rutte said, arguing that article 5 remained intact.
Though the decision to send Colby instead of Hegseth was a clear attempt to demonstrate that Nato had reduced significance for the US, European diplomats insisted he was still an important figure, close to the vice-president, JD Vance.
In December, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, skipped a meeting of Nato foreign ministers and sent the deputy secretary Christopher Landau instead. After addressing counterparts in Brussels, Landau left the meeting early.
Colby stayed for the entirety of the three-hour meeting on Thursday, listening to the other 31 defence ministers each giving speeches of up to three minutes in length. It was taken as sign of respect to Nato members.
Ukraine’s allies committed $35bn in military aid this year following the Nato defence ministers meeting, according to UK defence secretary John Healey. Pledges were made at a meeting of the Ukraine contact group, a group of 50 countries, which came in the afternoon after the Nato session.
