US defence secretary tells Europe to lead on Ukraine and raise spending to 5% of GDP

The United States is no longer "primarily focused" on the security of Europe, Pete Hegseth told his counterparts in Brussels on Wednesday, delivering the clearest signal yet that the Trump administration intends to reshape the transatlantic security bargain that has underpinned the continent for three-quarters of a century.

Speaking at a lunchtime meeting of the Ukraine contact group chaired by the UK defence secretary, John Healey, the newly confirmed US defence secretary said Europe must provide "the overwhelming share" of future military aid to Kyiv and accept that restoring Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is unrealistic. The language was notably softened from a draft briefed to journalists beforehand, which had declared Washington was no longer "the primary guarantor of security in Europe", a formulation that would have explicitly recast the 75-year-old NATO alliance.

A strategic pivot articulated in Brussels

Hegseth framed the shift as a necessity driven by "consequential threats to our homeland" and a "peer competitor in the communist Chinese" capable of threatening the American mainland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific. "The US is prioritising deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognising the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing trade-offs to ensure deterrence does not fail," he said. "As the United States shifts its attention to these threats, European allies must lead from the front."

The remarks came a day before Hegseth's first NATO summit of defence ministers. They reflect priorities repeatedly stated by President Trump but go further in public than previous US officials have dared. While the secretary stopped short of saying Washington would not honour Article 5, the collective defence clause invoked only once, after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the implication was unmistakable: Europe can no longer assume American military preponderance on its soil.

Ukraine: borders, membership and the shape of peace

On Ukraine, Hegseth sketched out an opening position for any future negotiations with Moscow. Returning to the 2014 borders, which would require Russia to relinquish Crimea and the parts of Donbas it has occupied since 2014, was "an unrealistic objective." Pursuing it, he argued, "will only prolong the war and cause more suffering." The formulation effectively acknowledges the territorial status quo created by Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and its proxy war in eastern Ukraine, a position Kyiv has consistently rejected.

He also ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine, a long-standing Russian demand. Instead, any peace would have to be secured by "capable European and non-European troops", explicitly not American, and those forces would not operate under a NATO mission or benefit from Article 5 coverage. In effect, any European deployment would rely on bilateral or coalition commitments rather than the alliance's collective guarantee.

The 5% demand and the arithmetic of European rearmament

Departing from his prepared text, Hegseth emphasised that the United States wants NATO allies to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defence. He singled out Poland, which has already reached that level, as an example. For the United Kingdom, currently at 2.33%, meeting the target would require more than doubling the defence budget, an increase of roughly £50 billion a year at today's prices. Germany, at roughly 2.1% in 2024, faces a similar proportional leap.

The 5% figure is not a formal NATO target; the alliance's agreed guideline remains 2%, though many members still fall short. Hegseth's demand reflects a view in Washington that European defence industrial capacity has atrophied to the point where even current spending levels do not translate into usable combat power quickly enough. Whether European electorates will accept the tax increases or spending cuts required to approach 5% is an open question in capitals from Paris to Rome.

Europe's capacity gap and the numbers problem

The practical implications of Hegseth's vision were laid bare by Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier this week. The Ukrainian president told the Guardian that "security guarantees without America are not real" and estimated a multinational deterrence force based in Ukraine after a ceasefire would need to be 100,000 to 150,000 strong. That is far smaller than the 600,000-plus Russian troops currently in occupied Ukraine, but it is a force size that many European militaries, the United Kingdom included, would struggle to generate given persistent recruitment and retention shortfalls.

The British Army, for instance, has shrunk to roughly 74,000 regular personnel, its smallest size since the Napoleonic era. France, Germany and Italy face similar demographic and institutional constraints. Without US enablers, strategic lift, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, air defence, and command and control, a European-led force of that magnitude would be operationally fragile. Hegseth did not address how the capability gap would be bridged.

The China pivot and the logic of scarcity

Underpinning the rhetoric is a genuine strategic calculation. The Pentagon's 2022 National Defense Strategy, retained and sharpened by the incoming administration, identifies China as the "pacing challenge" for US military planning. The Indo-Pacific theatre demands naval and air assets, long-range strike capabilities, and a logistics footprint that competes directly with European requirements. Every carrier strike group, squadron of F-35s, or battalion of long-range fires stationed in Europe is one not available for the Western Pacific.

Hegseth's mention of "border security" as a homeland defence priority also signals a domestic political dimension. The administration has ordered active-duty troops to the southern border and framed migration as a national security threat. That mission consumes personnel and readiness cycles that would otherwise be available for NATO exercises or eastern flank rotations.

Article 5 and the credibility of the alliance

The secretary was careful not to renounce Article 5. "They fall short of saying the US would not protect a NATO member if attacked," as one diplomat put it. But credibility rests on capability and political will, not merely treaty text. If the United States signals that its primary focus lies elsewhere, and that its forces are postured for the Pacific, allies must ask whether a future president would actually risk a great-power war over a Baltic incursion. That doubt, more than any formal withdrawal, erodes deterrence.

European leaders have heard versions of this argument before, from Robert Gates in 2011, from James Mattis in 2018, but never from a defence secretary who paired it with an explicit demand for 5% of GDP and a de facto concession on Ukrainian territory. The combination suggests the administration is not merely burden-sharing but burden-shedding.

The Brussels meeting was only Hegseth's first international outing as defence secretary. The language may evolve, the demands may be negotiated, but the direction is set. Europe's strategic autonomy, long discussed, rarely funded, has moved from aspiration to necessity. Whether the continent's governments, parliaments and publics are prepared to pay the price remains the defining question of the next decade.