Europe Is Accelerating a NATO Fallback Plan in Case Trump Pulls Out
The Continent is drawing up a contingency for greater European involvement as tensions rise over Iran war
April 14, 2026 The Wall Street Journal
A European fallback plan to ensure defense using NATO’s existing structures is gaining traction after getting buy-in from Germany.
The plans gained urgency amid European anxiety over U.S. reliability and President Trump’s threats to leave NATO.
Europeans are taking on more command-and-control roles and accelerating production of vital military equipment.
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- A European fallback plan to ensure defense using NATO’s existing structures is gaining traction after getting buy-in from Germany.View more
A fallback plan to ensure Europe can defend itself using NATO’s existing military structures if the U.S. departs is gaining traction after getting buy-in from Germany, a long-term opponent of a go-it-alone approach.
The officials working on the plans, which some officials are referring to as “European NATO,” are seeking to get more Europeans into the alliance’s command-and-control roles and supplement U.S. military assets with their own.
The plans—advancing informally through side discussions and over dinner meetings in and around the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—aren’t intended to rival the current alliance, participants said. European officials are aiming to preserve deterrence against Russia, operational continuity and nuclear credibility even if Washington withdraws forces from Europe or refuses to come to its defense, as President Trump has threatened.
The plans, first conceived last year, underscore the depth of European anxiety over U.S. reliability. They accelerated after Trump threatened to seize Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark, and are now gaining fresh urgency amid the standoff over Europe’s refusal to back America’s war in Iran.
Crucially, a political reversal in Berlin is boosting momentum. For decades, Germany resisted French-led calls for greater European sovereignty in its defense, preferring to keep America as the ultimate guarantor of European security. That is now changing under German Chancellor Friedrich Merz because of concerns about the U.S.’s dependability as an ally during the Trump presidency and beyond, according to people familiar with his thinking.
The challenge is enormous. NATO’s entire structure is built around American leadership at almost every level, from logistics and intelligence to the alliance’s top military command.
Europeans are now trying to shoulder more of those responsibilities, which Trump has long demanded. The alliance will be “more European-led,” its Secretary-General Mark Rutte said recently.
The difference now is that Europeans are taking steps under their own initiative, due to Trump’s growing hostility, rather than as a result of U.S. goading. In recent days, Trump branded European allies as “cowards” and called NATO a paper tiger, adding, in reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Putin knows that too.”
“A burden shifting from the U.S. toward Europe is ongoing and it will continue…as part of U.S. defense and national security strategy,” said Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, one of the leaders involved in the plans.
“The most important thing is to understand that it’s taking place and also to do it in a very managed and controllable way, instead of [the U.S.] just quickly pulling out,” Stubb said in an interview.
Stubb is one of the few European leaders who has maintained a close relationship with Trump, and his country has one of the strongest armed forces on the Continent and its longest border with Russia.
Earlier this month, Trump threatened to leave NATO over allies’ refusal to support his Iran campaign, saying the move was already “beyond reconsideration.” Any withdrawal from the alliance would require congressional approval, but the president could still move troops or assets out of Europe, or withhold support, using his authority as commander in chief.
Immediately after Trump’s threat, Stubb called the president to brief him on Europe’s plans to strengthen its own defenses.
“The basic message to our American friends is that after all these decades it’s time for Europe to take more responsibility for its own security and defense,” Stubb said.
The decisive political accelerant for Europe has been the historic change in Berlin, which hosts U.S. nuclear weapons and has long avoided questioning America’s role as a guarantor of European security. Germans and other Europeans feared that promoting European leadership inside NATO could offer the U.S. an excuse to reduce its role—an outcome many Europeans feared.
Yet, late last year, Merz started re-evaluating that long-held view after concluding that Trump was prepared to abandon Ukraine, according to people familiar with his thinking. Merz was concerned that Trump was confusing victim and aggressor in the war, and there were no longer clear values guiding U.S. policy within NATO, the people said.
Despite that, the German leader didn’t want to publicly question the alliance, which would be dangerous, the people said. Instead, the Europeans would need to take on a bigger role. Ideally, the U.S. would stay in the alliance but the bulk of the defense would be left to the Europeans, the people said.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said current discussions inside NATO aren’t always easy, but if they result in decisions, that would create an opportunity for Europe. He called NATO “irreplaceable both for Europe and the U.S.”
“But it’s also clear that we Europeans must assume more responsibility for our defense, and we are doing that,” Pistorius said. “NATO must become more European in order to remain trans-Atlantic.”
Germany’s shift unlocked broader agreement among others, including the U.K., France, Poland, the Nordic countries and Canada, which are now casting the contingency plan as a coalition-of-the-willing within NATO, according to officials involved.
“We are taking precautions and having informal talks with a group of like-minded allies, and will contribute to filling the gap within NATO when so required,” said Sweden’s ambassador to Germany, Veronika Wand-Danielsson.
Only after Berlin moved did contingency planning turn into tackling practical military questions, such as who would run NATO’s air-and-missile defenses, reinforcement corridors into Poland and the Baltic states, logistics networks and major regional exercises if U.S. officers stepped aside. These remain the biggest challenges, officials said.
Officials say that reintroducing the military draft is another aspect critical to the plan’s success. Many nations abandoned it after the Cold War. “I’m not going to give advice to any European countries, but in terms of civic education, national identity and national unity, there is probably nothing better than compulsory military service,” Stubb said. Finland retained the draft.
Officials involved want to accelerate Europe’s production of vital equipment in fields where Europe lags behind the U.S., including anti-submarine warfare, space and reconnaissance capabilities, in-flight refueling and air mobility. Officials point to the announcement by Germany and the U.K. last month of a joint project to develop stealthy cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons as an example of the new initiative.
While the European effort marks a fundamental reversal in thinking, realizing the ambition will be difficult. The Supreme Allied Commander for Europe is always an American, and U.S. officials have said they have no intention of surrendering that post.
No European member has sufficient stature inside NATO to replace the U.S. as military leader, in part because only the U.S. can provide the continentwide nuclear umbrella that underpins the alliance’s founding principle of mutual deterrence through strength.
Europeans are stepping into more leadership roles but still lack critical capabilities due to years of underspending and reliance on the U.S.
A Europeanization of NATO “should have come before now,” said retired U.S. Adm. James Foggo, who held senior posts in and linked to NATO. He said European members have many very professional officers and leaders.
“I think they have the capability. They’ve got some of the hardware” but need to invest and develop capabilities faster, Foggo said.
The transition is already under way. A growing number of key NATO command posts are now held by Europeans, and many major exercises held recently or scheduled in the coming months will be led by European forces—notably in the Nordic region, where the alliance borders Russia.
A particularly difficult gap is in intelligence and nuclear deterrence. European officials say no amount of troop reshuffling can quickly replace the U.S. satellite, surveillance and missile-warning systems that form the backbone of NATO’s credibility, leaving France and Britain under pressure to expand both their nuclear and strategic intelligence roles.
Germany’s shift opened the way to the most sensitive element of sovereign European defense: replacing the U.S. nuclear umbrella. After Trump threatened to invade Greenland, Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron then opened discussions over whether France’s nuclear deterrent could be extended to cover other European nations, including Germany.
Trump himself appeared to acknowledge that Greenland had become the watershed.
“It all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland,” he said of his threat to leave NATO. “We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us and I said, ‘OK, bye bye.’”
Radoslaw Sikorski, the vice-premier of Poland, later posted a video of Trump’s statement to which he appended the comment “Noted.”
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Appeared in the April 15, 2026, print edition as 'Europe Presses Fallback Plan If U.S. Retreats From NATO'.
Bojan Pancevski is The Wall Street Journal’s chief European political correspondent, covering European and global affairs. He produces major investigations, agenda-setting scoops, analyses of politics and diplomacy, and deeply reported features about extraordinary people and events.
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He co-authored a bestselling book about the crimes of Josef Fritzl, an investigation into one of the most extraordinary criminal cases in contemporary European history.
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