NATO Is Having a Military Exercise. The U.S., Its Largest Member, Won't Be There. [View all]

Source: NY Times

At a Spanish port 50 miles northwest of Gibraltar, four Turkish Navy ships, including a brand-new amphibious assault ship that doubles as an aircraft carrier, were set to arrive Friday to take part in NATO military exercises. They will then travel to Germany’s Baltic Sea coast, bringing tanks, landing craft, helicopters, drones and troops from southern Europe to northern Germany.

About 10,000 troops from 11 nations will participate. But not a single U.S. weapon or soldier will be among them.

Conceived long before President Trump was accused of undermining faith in the military alliance and its defense pact, the exercise, called Steadfast Dart, is being watched closely to see how well the allies manage without their largest and most important partner.

On paper, Steadfast Dart is designed to gauge how quickly the countries can get their military assets from one end of the continent to the other in case of an attack, a test of NATO’s Allied Reaction Force. But it comes as European leaders are scrambling to respond to signals from Washington that the NATO alliance is no longer as untouchable as it once was. “This exercise could well give an impression of the future of a Europeanized NATO,” said Lukas Mengelkamp, an analyst at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg. The operation is the largest NATO exercise planned for this year, and with it, European NATO partners aim to show what they can do on their own.


Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/world/europe/nato-military-exercise-spain-germany.html