Faction fight: How Europeans can better influence American foreign policy battles

European Council on Foreign Relations | Majda Ruge

The United States Pentagon is leveraging a conventional defence readiness questionnaire to pressure European NATO allies into aligning with American commercial and Middle Eastern foreign policy priorities. This hybrid pressure campaign, driven by competing prioritiser and primacist factions within the Trump administration, threatens to reduce American security commitments in Europe if allies do not comply.

This bureaucratic friction intensifies as Washington grapples with depleted military stockpiles and the high operational costs of its campaign against Iran. European geography remains vital to global US power projection. While Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly criticised countries restricting base access, the upcoming 2026 US force-posture review offers Europe unexpected negotiating leverage. To exploit this, European policymakers must overcome their current fragmentation—highlighted by 27 individual responses to the Pentagon questionnaire—and present a unified front to resist Washington's bilateral divide-and-conquer tactics before the 2028 presidential transition.

Comment

The Pentagon's conventional defence readiness questionnaire exposes a fundamental shift in how Washington intends to leverage its security guarantees. By conditioning bilateral cooperation on compliance with non-NATO contingencies, such as operations against Iran, the Trump administration is effectively bypassing collective decision-making frameworks. This transactional approach directly challenges the multilateral cohesion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

The mechanism of this leverage operates through the upcoming 2026 US force-posture review, where bilateral basing agreements will be weighed against individual ally responses. By negotiating access rights bilaterally with capitals like Madrid or Bucharest rather than through Brussels, Washington exploits geographic fragmentation to secure unilateral operational freedom. Consequently, the utility of the Rota naval base or Mihail Kogălniceanu airbase becomes a tool for extracting political concessions rather than collective deterrence.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If Washington uses the 2026 US force-posture review to bilaterally penalise allies that restricted airspace access during the Iran conflict, how will this affect the long-term viability of NATO's collective defence planning?

The pattern suggests that bilateral penalisation would fragment NATO's northern and southern flanks, as frontline states prioritise immediate US reassurance over collective European autonomy. This divergence points to a two-tier alliance structure where access-granting nations receive advanced capabilities like Aegis Ashore integration, while non-compliant members face reduced rotational deployments. Ultimately, this friction is likely to degrade the operational synchronisation required for large-scale European theatre deterrence.

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