Romania is offering to help pay for America’s troops to stay. Europe is now haggling over the rent on its own defence.

"We still love you," America's ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, told a European audience at the Warsaw Security Forum this month, according to Euronews. "I keep telling our European allies… the United States isn't stepping back."

A week later, one of those allies made an offer that tells you how much the love is now worth. Romania, Bloomberg reported on 19 October, has offered to cover part of the cost of the American troops stationed on its soil, Militarnyi relayed. Bucharest is joining Poland and the Baltic states, which are also looking for ways to make it financially worth Washington's while to stay.

Love, it turns out, comes with a service charge.

How we got here

Nobody can say the Americans did not warn us. In a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee on 22 September, Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's policy chief, said the number of US brigade combat teams assigned or allocated to Europe had been cut from five to three, back to its 2021 level, Defence Industry Europe reported. In May, the Pentagon ordered about 5,000 troops out of Germany. A wider review of America's military presence in Europe is due by December, and Whitaker declined to "preview" it because "it is not ready".

Romania, which hosts around 1,000 US service members, was the first European country to see its American contingent cut under this administration. Now it is offering money to keep the rest.

Washington calls the new arrangement "NATO 3.0". Pete Hegseth's version, quoted in Colby's statement, is a NATO "focused on hard power and real deterrence… with our allies actually taking the lead in Europe's conventional defense."

The Americans have a point

This newspaper is not going to pretend that is an outrage. It is, frankly, overdue. For thirty years after the Cold War, much of Western Europe treated defence as a subscription service paid for by the American taxpayer, while it spent the savings on pensions and preached to Washington about everything else. A continent richer than Russia many times over should not need American brigades to deter it. On that, Hegseth and Colby are right, and Europe's own defence commissioner agrees. "Europe needs to take responsibility in our hands," Andrius Kubilius said on the same Warsaw panel.

The scandal is not that America is leaving. It is who is paying to slow the exit, and who is not.

The east pays twice

Look at the countries reaching for their wallets: Romania, Poland, the Baltics. These are the states on the front line, and they are already spending heavily on their own forces. Poland, Whitaker noted approvingly, is spending 4.7 percent of GDP on core defence. Romania plans to put about €4 billion by 2040 into its Mihail Kogălniceanu air base on the Black Sea, the same coast where drones are now hitting ships.

Now these countries are offering to pay a second time, for someone else's soldiers. It is hard to blame them for not waiting for the rest of Europe to fill the gap.

Consider the EU's flagship rearmament fund. SAFE, the €150 billion defence loan instrument, has so far paid out almost €13.5 billion in pre-financing to 11 countries, about 9 percent of the total, according to Defence Deals. Poland took the biggest slice. Some governments are taking far less than they were offered. Hungary cut its request from €16.4 billion to €5.4 billion. Italy's revised plan, approved by the Commission on 13 October, is for slightly more than €8 billion against €14.9 billion originally allocated. Kubilius has put the unused amount at €10 to €20 billion.

So here is Europe in October 2026. The frontline states are offering to pay Washington rent for its troops. A big founding member is taking barely more than half of the cheap EU defence loans it was offered. And the European Defence Agency's leaked capability report, Euronews says, shows "major capability gaps", above all in drone defence and maritime warfare.

Rent is not a strategy

There is nothing shameful in host-nation support; Japan and South Korea have paid towards American bases for decades. If Bucharest can keep a US presence on the Black Sea for a reasonable price, its government is doing its job.

But rent buys time, not security. American priorities will move, as Colby openly says, towards China and the Middle East. No cheque from Bucharest will change the Pentagon's view of where the next decade's danger lies. A Europe that defends itself by subscription remains at the mercy of the next review, the next budget and the next election in a country where it has no vote.

Kubilius estimates that replacing America's strategic enablers could cost Europe up to €500 billion. That is a frightening number. It is also the price of no longer having to say thank you for the love.

What should change? The countries that are underspending, or under-borrowing, should be named and pressed, inside NATO and inside the EU. Ursula von der Leyen wants the unused SAFE money for joint projects with Ukrainian companies. That is sensible, but a good share should also go where the threat is already landing: air and drone defence on the eastern flank and the Black Sea. And joint purchases should be measured in delivered systems, not signed loan agreements.

Romania's offer is a rational act by a frightened government. The fact that it had to make it is the most damning verdict yet on Europe's promise to look after itself.