NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte insisted today that European powers have “gotten the message” and will militarise fast to assuage US concerns it is carrying them.

The former Dutch prime minister told a European Political Community summit in Yerevan, Armenia that Europe was “stepping up” to deliver “a bigger role for Europe and a stronger Nato,” as the US-led alliance began military exercises involving thousands of troops in north-east Poland, close to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany, followed by hints it was just the beginning of a steeper reduction in the US presence in Europe, has prompted top EU politicians like French President Emmanuel Macron to call for further acceleration of the rearmament drives multiple European countries — including France, Britain and Germany — have already announced.

At the summit EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas admitted the US decision had come as a “surprise” which meant “we really have to strengthen the European pillar in Nato.”

Less attention has focused on the simultaneous US announcement that it would not after all deploy intermediate-range missiles in Germany, as had been planned.

Left Party parliamentary leader Soren Pellman welcomed that news, saying even if Mr Trump’s announcement was a rebuke to Chancellor Friedrich Merz for criticising the Iran war, “sometimes politicians make the right decisions for the wrong reasons.”

Deploying intermediate-range missiles to Germany — banned under the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty between the US and Soviet Union, which was revoked by Mr Trump in 2018 — would be “part of a highly dangerous arms race” and would “destabilise security rather than strengthen it,” Mr Pellman said. However, he cautioned that the peace movement should not assume the threat had gone away permanently.

The European Political Community summit preceded the first direct EU-Armenia summit, itself a sign of the former Soviet state’s geopolitical reorientation.

Following the failure of Russian peacekeeping troops to prevent the reconquest of ethnic Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan in 2023, Armenia has withdrawn from the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation and replaced Russian arms imports with other suppliers, mainly India and France.