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President Donald Trump's administration is pressuring NATO to reduce the alliance's foreign affairs activities, including ending the mission in Iraq. Politico reports this involves four diplomats.
According to the publication, Washington is determined to withdraw its delegation from Iraq before September 2026, reduce its presence in Kosovo and refuse to invite Ukraine and its Pacific partners (New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Australia) to the July summit in Ankara. Additionally, the United States plans to withdraw about 2.5 thousand troops from Iraq as part of Trump's “commitment to ending endless wars.”
Diplomats call what is happening a “return to factory settings” – the transformation of NATO into a purely Euro-Atlantic defense bloc without cooperation and expansion programs. One of the publication's interlocutors criticized this approach, saying that partnership is crucial for deterrence. The operation in Iraq was launched during Trump's first term in 2018 and has been expanded several times at Baghdad's request to counter the terrorist threat of the Islamic State (IS, designated a terrorist organization in Russia and banned).
Previously, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the problem of the North Atlantic Alliance is the need to rethink NATO's obligations, as well as the erosion of Europe's defense potential. He noted that America's allies understand the importance of America's presence in the military bloc, “because the alliance cannot exist without Washington.”
