(Adnkronos) – Italy on Wednesday played down a Wall Street Journal report that Europe is accelerating a Nato fallback plan to ensure capabilities should US president Donald Trump’s administration withdraw forces from the continent or refuse to come to its defence.
“You’ll have to ask the United States about that. As far as we are aware, there is currently no move to pull out American troops,” Tajani said at a press conference in Berlin.
“We strongly believe in Nato. Iran does not fall within the Alliance’s remit, so we have not intervened, but it is also a political alliance, not just a military one,” Tajani went on.
“Nato has guaranteed peace from the end of the war to the present day,” Tajani underlined.
Officials are speeding up plans to put more Europeans in strategic Nato command and control roles, while supplementing US military assets with European ones, according to the WSJ. The move is reportedly spearheaded by Germany, which under Chancellor Friedrich Merz has begun to change its longstanding policy of reliance on the US as the primary security guarantor, driven by growing concerns over Washington’s reliability as a longterm ally amid heightened tensions linked to the Iran war.
In March, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper cited sources close to the Trump administration as saying the president was weighing the withdrawal of US troops from Germany amid frustration that at not all Nato members were on track to spend a target 5 percent of their GDP on defence and after allies declined to support the war against Iran.
