Pentagon questionnaire probes NATO allies on political loyalty to US

The Pentagon has distributed a three-page questionnaire to NATO allies that reads less like a routine military review and more like a loyalty test. The document, obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera, asks pointed questions about whether member countries are publicly supporting American foreign policy priorities and whether they have aligned themselves with what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calls the approach of being "strong, clear, and quiet." The questionnaire is framed as part of a six-month Pentagon review of US military forces in Europe, but its language and structure suggest something more deliberate: a systematic effort to measure which allies are falling in line with the Trump administration's vision for the transatlantic alliance.

The most revealing questions come near the end of the document. One asks directly whether countries have imposed restrictions on US access to their military bases and airspace—a particularly sensitive issue given the ongoing US-Israel conflict with Iran. Several European nations did exactly that after the war began on February 28, closing their airspace to American military operations or refusing to allow their bases to be used for strikes against Iranian targets. The questionnaire then asks the obvious follow-up: are these countries willing to remove those restrictions? This framing exposes what experts see as a fundamental confusion at the heart of the Pentagon's approach. NATO is a collective defense alliance bound by Article 5, which commits members to defend one another if attacked. The Iran conflict falls entirely outside that mandate. Yet the questionnaire treats allied participation in American Middle East operations as a measure of loyalty to the alliance itself.

Spain has already felt the weight of this pressure. The country sought an exemption from a 2025 NATO agreement requiring members to spend 5 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. Trump responded with public criticism. When Spain then closed its airspace to US military flights and refused to allow its bases to be used for Iran operations, the president threatened to cut trade with Madrid. The questionnaire's questions about base access and military spending are not abstract policy matters—they are direct references to specific countries that have already crossed the administration.

The document also probes whether allies have endorsed Trump's "NATO 3.0" concept, which envisions European countries taking on substantially more of their own defense burden while the United States provides what it describes as "more limited support." This is not new rhetoric. Trump has long demanded that European allies spend more on their militaries. But the questionnaire transforms these demands into a checklist against which allied compliance can be measured and, implicitly, rewarded or punished.

A senior defense official from a NATO ally, speaking anonymously, described the questionnaire as evidence that "this administration has been confusing NATO topics with unilateral US military operations." The official noted that NATO has no role in Middle East conflicts, yet the questionnaire treats participation in Iran operations as a loyalty metric. A senior European official offered a more cautious reading, saying the document "doesn't explicitly condition US military presence on political loyalty." But that same official acknowledged what the questionnaire actually signals: the Pentagon's willingness to justify force reductions for countries deemed insufficiently aligned with White House priorities. The message to allies, the official suggested, is clear: stay on the good side of the administration by expecting to align closely with its agenda.

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Jim Townsend told Al Jazeera that questions about allied loyalty are not unique to this administration. "We do know this administration cares very much about loyalty," he said, "whether it's their own people or the allies, particularly." Trump himself has spoken sternly to allied leaders about his expectations for their support. What distinguishes this moment is the systematization of that pressure—the creation of a formal document that turns loyalty into a measurable quantity, something that can be tracked, compared, and used to justify decisions about where American military resources will be stationed and for how long. The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment about the questionnaire.