THIS IS A CRISIS

As U.S. military support for Europe wanes, NATO DRILLS in Romania highlight a huge capability gap, with one military official telling Newsweek...

- Ellie Cook

THE WINTER BITTERNESS OF ROMANIA'S steppe was not the only chill as NATO soldiers exercised just miles from Ukraine last month. There were no U.S. forces taking part in NATO's biggest exercises this year. This may have always been the plan, but European T nations going it alone on Ukraine's doorstep took on a fresh significance as U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration rewrote Washington's relationship with the continent.

The Steadfast Dart drills at the southeastern training ground of Smardan throughout February were designed to show how a British-led multinational force could operate in a crisis. Aircraft struck mock enemy targets, tanks blasted live shells, soldiers wiggled their way through a frozen trench network and a bagpiper emerged from a smoke screen to waiting cameras. But Trump's pullback has shaken European nations badly and raised questions over how the continent could defend itself in a real crisis without the U.S. backing that has protected much of Europe from the potential Russian threat since the end of World War II.

Decades of sidelining defense spending after the end of the Cold War has allowed European countries to maintain prized social welfare systems, but has also left them with yawning capability gaps on defense and a deep reliance on the U.S. that has become increasingly unpalatable to the White House. There is no shying away from this from European officials, nor a desire to-there is a universal acceptance, privately and publicly, that the continent has been lamentably lax.