U.S. President Donald Trump pledged an additional 5,000 troops to Poland in a Truth Social post on May 21. Speaking at a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Helsingborg, Sweden, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the following day that Washington's disappointment with some allies over their response to the Iran war would still need to be addressed.

The meeting was Rubio's first with his NATO counterparts since the outbreak of the Iran war exacerbated tensions within the alliance. Trump has publicly weighed a U.S. withdrawal from the alliance and questioned whether Washington remains bound by its mutual defense commitment after European allies declined to back the U.S.-Israeli campaign. The troop pledge follows reports that the Pentagon had abruptly canceled a planned rotational deployment of roughly 4,000 U.S.-based troops to Poland, as well as its early-May announcement of a 5,000-troop drawdown from Germany, part of a plan to return U.S. force levels in Europe to roughly their pre-2022 footprint, and the cancellation of a planned Tomahawk missile deployment to Germany.