United States

As of 18 October 2026. Washington is at war with Iran, mediates between Russia and Ukraine and has eased its own sanctions to take Russian diesel. On 8 October Trump ruled out new strikes on Iran before the midterm vote and kept the naval blockade in force. American diesel had cost a record 6.52 dollars a gallon in September. With the deal of 9 October the Treasury exempted Russian cargoes already loaded from sanctions until April 2027. Two days later Trump declared an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine on Truth Social. Moscow never confirmed it. On 15 October Kyiv declared it over and resumed its strikes on Russian refineries.

In Europe the Pentagon is reviewing the roughly 80,000 American troops on the continent. Options for Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth are due on 6 November, three days after the midterm elections. The first date decides who holds Congress. The second opens the choice of how many of the 80,000 stay.

The strategy of December 2025 ranks the Western Hemisphere first, Asia second and Europe third. Europe sits downstream of Asia in this design, as DURCHD8’s reading of the document puts it, and China is the measure of every commitment. In 2026 two decisions that touch Europe followed from other contests. The review of American forces takes in the war on Iran, and the diesel deal answered the price at the pump before an election.

Washington can take such decisions alone because allies depend on what they have yet to replace, from the president’s nuclear weapons and the intelligence of the Five Eyes to the strategic bombers that remain the main gap in NATO’s plans. How many soldiers stand in Europe is decided in Washington: about 305,000 in 1991, about 65,000 in 2014, 100,000 again after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Poland buys Abrams tanks, HIMARS launchers and F-35s to bind Washington to its defence. Some allies withheld their bases from the strikes on Iran, Hegseth called it “shameful”, and the review now covers access, basing and overflight. Trump sold the Russian diesel as “lower prices for Americans”, Putin as good for “the entire global economy”, Zelensky as a way for Russia to “wage war for longer”. Europe’s dependence gives Washington its weight, and American priorities and American dates decide how it is used.

Germany hosts some 36,000 American troops and the headquarters of the European and Africa commands. About 5,000 are to leave. The stationing of a long-range fires battalion has been suspended, and in May Washington told allies it would shrink its share of NATO's force plans: a third fewer F-15 fighters, nine destroyers in place of seventeen, one aircraft carrier where there had been two. Berlin plans on Article 5, and the consultation in the alliance's council that would come before it stayed unused in the fast crises of the spring, DURCHD8's NATO study records. Twice this autumn Kyiv learned of an energy truce for its own war from an announcement in Washington.

How much of Europe's defence planning for 2027 rests on American forces that the review in November may move?

On every side of the war in Europe, Washington has a lever. Its envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner carry drafts between Kyiv and Moscow. Ukraine has received American weapons worth 10 billion dollars through a NATO purchase list since July 2025. With Russia it trades and sanctions at once: a sweeping sanctions law in September, an exemption for Russian diesel until April 2027 in October. In Luxembourg on 12 October the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas sent Washington a message of her own: “only pressure works with Russia”.

With China it has turned to summits. Trump went to Beijing in May, Xi Jinping came to Washington in September, and by Beijing’s account both agreed on “a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability”, with tariff cuts on 30 billion dollars of goods in each direction. With Israel it went to war against Iran in February, and allies fear that the review of American forces will punish those that did not support it. The European Union lends Kyiv 90 billion euros for 2026 and 2027. In Hungary the government lost the election five days after Vice President JD Vance campaigned for it in Budapest.

DURCHD8 reads the United States by what its decisions do to Europe. Reclassified: Europe’s New Position in the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy followed within a week of the strategy’s release. It reads the document on three levels, its own words, measurable indicators on both sides of the Atlantic and the dynamics they create for Europe, and it weighs the space the text gives each region. A week later From Capability Substitution to Decision Control took up a European Policy Centre paper on the “transatlantic divorce” and found that under such a forced transition decisions stay visible while their effects are settled elsewhere.

NATO Consensus as Ceremony was sealed on 14 April 2026 and then held against the following month. Of the four occasions on which the alliance’s council stayed idle, three were American moves: the troop cut in Germany and two truces negotiated outside the alliance. NATO’s Coordination Architecture Under Stress, NATO’s Hidden Failure Mode and Brussels, Spring 2026: An Alliance Functioning Without Deciding carry the argument in shorter form.

The study would be wrong if the council took up a crisis such as the war on Iran under Article 4 or 5, with European allies fully taking part. Whether the next crisis reaches the council before Washington acts is the test it leaves open.