US Cuts Leave Estonia Exposed

Estonia's defence minister, Hanno Pevkur, confirmed last week that the number of US troops in his country has fallen from roughly 500-700 to fewer than 100 (NV). A few days earlier, around 1,000 US soldiers left Lithuania after the Pentagon cancelled a linked armoured-brigade rotation to Poland (Stars and Stripes).

For Malta, this is not a remote Baltic story. It is about the machinery behind NATO's security guarantee, on which small states also rely when larger powers decide how much risk they are prepared to carry. From the Baltic to the Black Sea, the pattern is now clear. US troop rotations are temporary deployments. They are replaced only when Washington orders the next one. That replacement is no longer something allies can take for granted.

European governments are moving quickly to fill the gaps. They can improve bases, command structures and transport corridors. What they cannot manufacture is the one decision that still matters most: a White House order sending American troops back in.

Washington holds the switch

US rotational forces in Europe are not a legal entitlement for host countries. The president sets the political line. The defence secretary manages force levels. Commanders then execute the orders.

When Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth opened a six-month review of the US military presence in Europe in June, every eastern-flank rotation was pulled into one Washington decision cycle. According to Liga, citing the Wall Street Journal, Hegseth considered deeper cuts, but the White House blocked them without closing the issue. The review is still open. Host countries are therefore planning around a decision they cannot control.

There is plenty Europe can do below that level. After the Pentagon withdrew some forces, allies filled most of the holes within weeks (AP via Boston Globe). On 1 July, the 1st German-Netherlands Corps took over coordination of NATO land forces already assigned to Estonia and Latvia. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte presented this as Europeans taking on more of the land defence of Europe (NATO, Latvian MoD).

That matters. But command arrangements organise forces that already exist. They do not create fresh American deployments.

Every flank state hedges, and hits the same ceiling

Latvia has offered US forces priority access to its military bases and training grounds: better scheduling, faster reception and less administrative friction when American units arrive (LA.LV). That makes deployment easier once Washington says yes. It does not produce the yes.

Lithuania has gone further. Germany is stationing a permanent brigade there, expected to reach around 5,000 personnel by 2027, with schools and kindergartens for soldiers' children (Euronews, LRT). This is not a rotation that comes and goes. It is long-term European stationing.

Yet Lithuania's parliament still passed a resolution calling an uninterrupted US troop presence "an irreplaceable element of deterrence" (Regionų žinios). Even the country with the strongest European backstop is saying plainly that it does not replace the American one.

Romania is making the same calculation on the Black Sea. The US halved its troop presence there at the end of 2025 (DW). Bucharest responded by expanding the air base at Mihail Kogălniceanu, the place where allied forces arrive, assemble and move east (Digi24).

Better runways and staging areas reduce the time needed to move forces. But they do not replace the aircraft, refuelling capacity, surveillance systems and maritime patrol assets that make US forces so difficult for Europeans to substitute (AP via Boston Globe).

Germany sits behind this entire structure as the transit hub for eastern defence. Berlin is preparing legislation to give military transport priority on railways, roads and ports during a crisis (BMVg). The corridors are better than they were a decade ago. Who moves through them is still, in the American case, Washington's call.

Finland shows the limit in its cleanest form. Its national defence is among Europe's strongest, and its multinational NATO command in Mikkeli already includes American and Nordic officers (Finnish Defence Forces). Finnish analysts still judge a quick shift to full European self-sufficiency as unrealistic (Yle).

The line from Estonia to Romania is consistent. European allies are building better commands, easier base access, stronger transport routes and more useful legal frameworks. They are covering more gaps than many thought possible five years ago.

But a US unit on allied soil does something no European arrangement can copy. It ties any crisis directly to Washington. Frontline states can prepare the bases, corridors and command chains. They cannot supply the political decision that puts an American unit there.