Trump Administration Excludes UK, France and Baltics From Pentagon ‘Bergen Group’ on NATO’s Future
The Trump administration has left the UK, France and the Baltic states out of a smaller Pentagon-led working group on NATO’s future, concentrating early discussions among a subset of allies.
The Trump administration is narrowing who helps shape ideas for NATO’s future, leaving several of the alliance’s most prominent members outside a new core forum.
According to a description of the format, the administration has excluded the United Kingdom, France and the Baltic states from a Pentagon‑led working group on the alliance’s future. The smaller format, known as the “Bergen Group,” brings together the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany and the Netherlands.
Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby says the Bergen Group is meant to develop ideas that can later strengthen the wider alliance. In other words, this is a brainstorming forum whose proposals are expected to feed into NATO’s broader agenda rather than replace the existing 32‑nation decision‑making structure.
The choice of participants matters because agenda‑setting inside NATO often starts in small groups before moving to the full North Atlantic Council. Here, the invited countries include Nordic states with expertise in the Arctic and Baltic regions, Poland, and major continental economies such as Germany and the Netherlands.
The states left out in this case include the UK and France, both nuclear‑armed and long‑standing NATO members, and the Baltic countries that sit on the alliance’s front line with Russia. Their absence from the Bergen Group means they will first encounter some U.S.‑backed ideas only after those concepts have been shaped by others.
What happens next will show how influential the Bergen Group becomes. Signals to watch include whether its proposals are reflected in formal NATO documents, whether parallel formats emerge that include the excluded countries, and whether public statements from London, Paris or Baltic capitals challenge or endorse the group’s role.
Sources
- OSINT