Trump Team Shrinks NATO Future-Planning Group, Leaving UK, France and Baltics Out
The Trump administration has left the UK, France and the Baltic states outside a Pentagon-led group on NATO’s future while backing a smaller “Bergen Group” of select allies. Trump has also said those countries can’t attend next month’s NATO summit in Poland, raising questions over who shapes alliance strategy at a time of tension with Russia.
Who gets into the room where NATO’s future is discussed will shape how the alliance responds to its biggest threats. The Trump administration’s choice to keep several major allies out of a core planning forum is already changing that balance.
The administration has excluded the United Kingdom, France and the Baltic states from a Pentagon-led working group on the alliance’s future direction. This smaller forum, described publicly as the “Bergen Group,” currently brings together the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby has said it is intended to develop ideas that can later strengthen the wider alliance.
Leaving out some of NATO’s most militarily capable and Russia-focused members tightens control over early-stage strategy discussions. The UK and France each field nuclear arsenals and substantial expeditionary forces. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sit on the front line with Russia and depend heavily on integrated NATO planning for rapid reinforcement in a crisis.
Trump has separately said that the UK, the Baltic states and France are not allowed to attend next month’s NATO summit in Poland. If that statement were applied in practice, it would break with long-standing summit habits in which all allies take part in core deliberations, even when smaller coalitions form around particular missions or initiatives.
For Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, being left outside a group working on NATO’s future posture goes to the heart of their security assumptions. Their defense plans rely on close coordination with larger allies, including the UK, which plays a prominent role in NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence deployments, and France, which provides advanced air and ground units along the eastern flank.
The new configuration elevates Poland and the Nordic countries as Washington’s inner circle in Europe. Several of those states have only recently joined NATO or are still integrating fully into its command structures, yet now sit in a forum that shapes how deterrence on the continent is conceived. At the same time, London and Paris are moved away from the earliest stages of U.S.-driven planning despite their central military and political weight in the alliance.
There are practical consequences. If plans for air defense, cyber response or reinforcement concepts are first drafted among Bergen Group participants, and only later shown to excluded allies, senior commanders in the UK and France will be reacting to assumptions they did not help write. That can slow down agreement on deployments and make it harder to line up forces, ships and aircraft behind new concepts.
The move also fits a pattern seen during Trump’s time in office of working through smaller, like-minded coalitions inside broader alliances. Such formats can move faster, but when they touch core strategy, they risk weakening the sense of shared ownership that underpins collective defense.
With Russia’s war in Ukraine pushing NATO back toward high-intensity deterrence, European governments are sensitive to any sign of hierarchy inside the alliance. Voters in Warsaw, Berlin, Helsinki and Tallinn will watch not only where U.S. troops are based, but which governments help decide how those forces could be used.
What happens next will be visible in a few concrete ways: whether excluded allies speak out or instead build their own coordination channels; how widely the Bergen Group shares its agendas and papers inside NATO; and whether the Poland summit ultimately gathers all members in the main sessions despite Trump’s comment. If governments such as the UK or France delay or narrow new commitments until they regain a place in core talks, it will show that process disputes are beginning to affect policy.
Sources
- OSINT