CONSTANTA, ROMANIA – 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 U.S. 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 administration of U.S. President Donald Trump began a radical realignment of the U.S. military presence in Europe. In Romania, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization 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 during a visit to MK in July, the base told a more complicated story about Trump’s effort to remake NATO. 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 center 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 U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
Yet an examination of U.S. 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, more than 50 current and former Western officials, military officers, diplomats and defense experts were interviewed, including senior Trump administration officials, congressional aides, and former U.S. ambassadors to NATO. Bases used by NATO in Romania and Estonia were also visited, and NATO military exercises off the coast of North Carolina were observed.
The reporting revealed an alliance under strain though not yet broken. Nine current and former U.S. officials said that congressional Republicans and Democrats, along with powerful U.S. defense contractors with big European customers, have the political clout to block a U.S. 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.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
