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A raft of viral social media posts claims that Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has announced the complete withdrawal of troops from Europe.
The posts on X have racked up more than a million views altogether, and all feature the same clip of Rubio giving an interview to Fox News.
The captions say that the US spends 100,000 troops and $60 billion defending Europe every year, and that this, combined with Europe’s supposed lack of help to the US in the Strait of Hormuz crisis, justifies their complete withdrawal.
They also say that NATO’s dissolution is a “done deal”.
However, watching the clip reveals that, while Rubio is clearly critical of NATO and its European members, he does not announce a total withdrawal of US troops.
He says that, once the Strait of Hormuz crisis is resolved, Washington will reexamine the value of NATO and whether it has become a “one-way street” that only benefits Europe and not the US.
“When we need them to allow us to use their military bases, their answer is no? Then why are we in NATO?” Rubio says in the clip. “You have to ask that question: Why do we have billions and billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars, over the years trillions of dollars, and all these American forces stationed in the region, if we can only use them, when in our time of need, we’re not going to be allowed to use those bases?”
“So I think there is no doubt, unfortunately, after this conflict is concluded, we are going to have to reexamine that relationship,” he adds. “We’re going to have to reexamine the value of NATO and that alliance for our country. Ultimately, that’s a decision for the president to make, and he’ll have to make it.”
An official transcript of the interview was published by the US Department of State, and there’s no mention there of the country pulling all its troops out of Europe.
It shows that Rubio said he was previously a big proponent of NATO, because it enabled the US to “have military bases in Europe that allowed us to project power into different parts of the world when our national security was threatened.”
Fox News also published the whole video of the interview in an article on its website on 1 April, and again, Rubio does not refer to a full withdrawal of personnel.
However, it should be noted that the US has been making moves to reduce its military presence in Europe.
The Pentagon announced earlier in May that it intended to remove 5,000 troops from bases in Germany, followed by a decision to cancel the deployment of 4,000 troops in Poland.
Around 36,000 US troops are currently stationed in Germany, and around 80,000 in Europe as a whole.
Then, in an interview on Euronews’ Europe Today show, NATO senior military advisor Colonel Martin O’Donnell confirmed that the US is due to announce major cuts to the number of troops available to Europe in the event of an invasion or war.
He said that they’re part of an ongoing engagement between the US military and NATO military strategists, and that the areas where the US will draw back its commitments map directly onto areas where European countries have stepped up their capabilities and defence investment.
The US is, however, limited in how many troops it can withdraw from Europe due to its own defence legislation. Section 1249 of the National Defense Authorisation Act for 2026 stipulates that the Pentagon cannot use its budget to reduce troop levels in Europe to below 76,000 for more than 45 days unless it meets certain conditions.
There is also a waiting period for major troop withdrawals, meaning that, even if the US did decide to pull huge numbers of troops out of Europe, it would not happen immediately or without Congress’s approval.
O’Donnell and Rubio’s comments follow months of criticism by Donald Trump that NATO allies are not pulling their weight and threats by the US president against fellow members Canada and Denmark, prompting many European countries to attempt to ramp up their defence capabilities.
However, it’s inaccurate to suggest that NATO only benefits Europe and not the US. So far, the US is the only member state to have ever triggered the alliance’s Article 5 mutual defence clause, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that an armed attack against one NATO member shall be considered an attack against them all.
In response to the US’s use of it in 2001, NATO countries increased intelligence-sharing and cooperation, boosted security for US facilities and provided blanket overflight clearances for US aircraft, among other measures.
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