President Donald Trump is making a dangerous bet in Europe. This month, the United States announced that it was canceling the deployment of a long-range precision strike battalion to Germany and withdrawing some 5,000 troops from the country. It also abruptly canceled a rotational 4,000-to-5,000-strong combat team bound for Poland, following the earlier cancellation of a similar deployment to Romania in 2025. (The White House has suggested that new forces may still go to Poland but has not specified whether those would come from the United States or be redirected from Germany.) This week, European allies have told media that the Pentagon has informed NATO that it will shrink the forces Washington would rapidly deploy to Europe in a crisis—that is, in the event of a Russian attack on alliance territory.

At the same time, the Trump administration has sought to reassure allies that its commitment to Europe’s defense remains undiminished, pledging to sustain the nuclear umbrella over NATO. This seemingly tidy solution to burden sharing—fewer boots on the ground, an ultimate backstop—may appeal to some American voters, but it is strategically dangerous, eroding the foundations of the deterrence that has protected the transatlantic alliance for decades.

Rather than reinforcing stability in Europe, the Trump administration’s approach invites Russia to test NATO’s escalation dominance—that is, the ability to impose unacceptable costs or failure on the adversary at every step on the escalation ladder, forcing it to back down rather than escalate. Drawing down U.S. forces reduces that dominance and weakens deterrence against Russian aggression in Europe. Over time, a cycle of escalation could leave an American president with an unenviable choice: back down or risk nuclear conflict.

The key to deterring Moscow lies not at the top of the escalation ladder, where nuclear weapons are in play, but on its lower rungs, where conventional weapons are what matters. The goal should be to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from ordering any move against NATO. By the time Russia has seized limited territory on the alliance’s eastern flank and dared Washington to risk nuclear war to reverse its gains, the United States will be left with only the worst options.

To prevent such a scenario, Washington must maintain the forces in Europe that only the United States can provide and that Moscow fears most: long-range precision strike capabilities from air, land, and sea. And it must signal to Moscow that the United States would not stand aside in the initial phase of a Russian attack, waiting to see whether Europe’s conventional forces can repel the attack on their own. The Trump administration is right to press European allies to spend more on defense, but it cannot stop there. Doing so would hand Russia the escalation dominance it has long sought and bring the United States to the brink of nuclear war.

WHAT MOSCOW FEARS MOST

Over the past two decades, the Kremlin has come to........

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