MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/. The review of the US military presence in Europe, announced by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in June, is aimed at forcing European countries to pay more for the "American umbrella" and to finance the conflict in Ukraine on their own, military expert Boris Rozhin wrote in a column for TASS.

"The US is not relinquishing control over NATO, which it views as a key instrument of its dominance in Eurasia. Under Trump, Washington is simply seeking to force its European vassals to pay more for ‘American protection’ and to ‘fund the Ukrainian conflict on their own,’" the expert said.

According to him, while during Trump’s first term the Americans demanded that NATO members raise defense spending to 2-2.5% of GDP, the figure is now 4-5%, and a number of Alliance countries are already moving in that direction. This gives Trump the opportunity to claim that he has forced Europe to pay for its own security, thereby easing the financial burden on the United States.

With regard to Ukraine, Washington has also shifted the bulk of the costs from the US budget to the European one. The White House has abandoned the practice of providing weapons to Kiev free of charge, as was the case under the Biden administration, and has begun charging for arms--primarily from Europe under the PURL program. "At the same time, the US is openly promoting the idea that the conflict was unleashed by Biden and, of course, this is a ‘bad war,’ but the US will continue to profit from it by supplying weapons at Europe’s expense. Washington has not completely stopped providing Kiev with intelligence for strikes against Russia," Rozhin noted.

The expert noted that Hegseth’s initiative to review the issue of the future deployment of US troops in Europe is perceived as an attempt to systematize the Trump administration’s intentions to rethink the nature of its relationship with NATO. "The White House will make decisions based on scenarios for future military redeployment. However, these decisions will be made with an eye toward Hegseth’s own fate and the weakening of the domestic political positions of the Republicans and Trump following the recent US congressional elections," Rozhin concluded.