Hegseth warns Europeans ‘realities’ of China and border threats prevent US from guaranteeing their security

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned Europeans this week that “realities” prevent the U.S. from being its security guarantor, and to expect a drawdown of U.S. forces in the region. 

“We are focusing on security of our own borders. We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific,” Hegseth told a meeting of a Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Belgium on Wednesday. 

“The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific. Recognizing the reality of scarcity and making the resourcing trade-offs to ensure deterrence does not fail. Deterrence cannot fail.“

This was Hegseth’s first trip to the headquarters of the NATO alliance. 

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The U.S. defense secretary called on Europe to “take ownership of conventional security on the continent.”

“European allies must lead from the front,” he went on. “Together, we can establish a division of labor that maximize our comparative advantages in Europe and Pacific, respectively.”

Hegseth said on Tuesday the U.S. has no active plans to draw down forces in Europe but remains committed to analyzing U.S. troop postures across the globe. Speaking at U.S. Africa Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, he said the U.S. is committed to having a presence in Europe while emphasizing the continent should not rely on that presence for security. 

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“The European continent deserves to be free from any aggression, but it ought be those in the neighborhood investing the most in that defense,” he said. “That’s common sense. You defend your neighborhood, and the Americans will come alongside you in helping in that defense.”

Roughly 100,000 U.S. troops are deployed across Europe, about a third of which are in Germany, according to Defense Department figures. Some 375,000 U.S. forces are assigned to the Indo-Pacific Command. 

During his first term, President Donald Trump began pulling thousands of troops out of Europe. 

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has begun to bolster its troop presence on the southern border. Some 1,500 more U.S. troops deployed to the southern border last week, bringing the total up to 3,600. 

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Hegseth also said that any European peacekeeping forces sent to help Ukraine win the war against Russia must not be from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and would not be protected under Article 5, a provision that states an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all. 

The defense secretary said the U.S. does not believe allowing Ukraine into NATO is a “realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.”

Hegseth also called on NATO countries to step up after Trump recently called on them to boost defense spending to 5%. 

“The United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.”

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy suggested that security guarantees for Ukraine without the U.S. are “not real security guarantees.” 

“There are voices which say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no,” he told The Guardian. “Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees.”