US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on US President Donald Trump’s budget request for the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

The United States fired a fresh broadside at its NATO allies in Singapore over the weekend but Western European officials insisted the grouping remains resilient.

Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praised Asian partners for boosting defense spending and aligning closely with Washington as tensions with China mount.

“When our interests align, we act together with focused resolve,” he said. “When our interests diverge, we adjust pragmatically without the drama or the moralizing. I think Western Europe might take note.”

“Europe and NATO have some big decisions to make,” he said.

President Donald Trump’s administration has repeatedly accused European governments of under-investing in their militaries and relying too heavily on US protection, while urging both Europe and Asian allies to boost defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP.

Washington announced plans in May to pull 5,000 troops out of Germany, and Trump has threatened to pull out of NATO.

A senior NATO official sought to downplay the US troop withdrawal, saying it was already planned and that the alliance’s cohesion was unaffected.

“In a mature alliance, if one ally which in this case is the principal stakeholder needs to redirect some power somewhere else, he can do so, and the others must be able to step in,” said Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, chair of the NATO Military Committee.

Nils Hilmer, state secretary at Germany’s Federal Ministry of Defense, said Berlin was accelerating military investment regardless of future US deployments.

“What we know for sure… is that there’s going to be shifts in that field,” he said. “That’s why we are about to take the security in our own hands.”

European ministers also used the forum to reassure Asian partners that NATO remained credible beyond its immediate neighborhood.

“Our credibility in Asia also depends on our robustness in Europe, defending Ukraine in the face of the Russian aggression,” said French Defense Minister Catherine Vautrin in a speech to delegates.

Other European defense ministers argued that security theaters are increasingly intertwined.

“The European Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific theaters are becoming inseparable,” said Tore Sandvik, Norway’s minister of defense, noting that North Korean troops were fighting in Ukraine.

“The US will be occupied in more theaters,” he said.

But for all the criticism from the Pentagon, several U.S. Senators and members of the House of Representatives said they were seeking to reassure European and Asian allies that they had bipartisan support from Congress.

“I’ve heard the same anxiety from everyone, not just in the region,” said U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth. “I’ve actually got NATO allies worried about America’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific.”

Still, skepticism among other delegates lingers over Europe’s pace of change on investing in their collective security.

“Europe has to learn how to become a player,” said Pavlo Klimkin, non-resident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and a former Ukrainian minister of foreign affairs. “There is no way around it. But it could be extremely beneficial for their partnership with the United States, because the States would respect such European drive.”