In a trip timed ahead of a NATO summit in July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to travel to Sweden for a NATO foreign ministers meeting as European allies weigh concerns over U.S. troop posture in Europe and President Donald Trump’s approach to the alliance, the State Department said.
The State Department said Rubio will attend the NATO meeting in Helsingborg on Friday, one of the last senior-level NATO gatherings before alliance leaders meet at a summit in Ankara, Turkey, in July. The diplomacy comes against a backdrop of U.S. plans to reduce troop levels in Europe and worries among Europeans about reliability in U.S. commitments, while fallout from the Iran war and rising energy prices adds pressure to alliance planning, according to the report.
At the NATO meeting, Rubio is expected to echo previous U.S. demands for increased defense investment and greater burden sharing in the alliance, the State Department said in a statement. The statement also said Rubio will focus on Arctic issues and meet with NATO’s Arctic members to discuss shared economic and security interests in the Arctic and a strengthened posture in the High North.
The European unease includes attention on troop movements and how they could affect NATO readiness. Ahead of the NATO foreign ministers meeting, the alliance’s top military officer said he does not expect any more drawdowns of American troops from Europe in the near term beyond the 5,000 troops Trump announced would leave the continent. The remarks came from U.S. Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich following Trump’s early-month announcement of the move.
The Pentagon later said it would draw down thousands of troops in Europe by canceling deployments to Poland and Germany, rather than yanking out forces already stationed there. When asked about Trump’s plans regarding troop levels in Poland, Vice President JD Vance said the administration’s focus is on promoting “European independence and sovereignty,” and he disputed that the U.S. is reducing troop levels in Poland, saying on Tuesday that the deployment to Poland was delayed and described it as a rotation delay rather than a reduction.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell also described the move as a temporary delay of deployment of U.S. forces to Poland, characterizing Poland as a “model U.S. ally.” Parnell said the delay resulted from reducing the number of brigade combat teams assigned to Europe from four to three, and indicated the Pentagon still needed to decide which troops to station where.
Rubio’s NATO stop arrives as transatlantic ties also face sensitivities beyond troop levels. The report said that Trump has rankled Europeans with persistent talk about taking over Greenland, and that Trump’s special envoy for Greenland, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, visited the island this week. Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said he met with Landry and made it clear that Greenlandic people insist on self-determination, with Nielsen later quoted by Danish TV 2 as saying, “The Greenlandic people are not for sale. Greenlandic self-determination is not something that can be negotiated.”
After the Sweden meeting, Rubio will travel to India and plans to visit four cities, including Kolkata, Agra, Jaipur and New Delhi. In New Delhi, the report said he is expected to meet Indian officials and counterparts from the other three members of the “Quad” grouping of Indo-Pacific democracies, which includes Japan and Australia.
The trip also places Rubio in a role that European officials often welcomed earlier this year because of his more measured style in alliance settings, the report said. Rubio has been dispatched on several similar missions this year, including to the Munich Security Conference in February and, more recently, to Italy, where he met with Italian officials and the pope after Trump criticized the pontiff for his stances on crime and the Iran war.