Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Germany, review a planned deployment to Poland, and freeze a project to station Tomahawk missiles on German soil has set off alarm bells in European capitals. In the Old Continent, fears are growing that those moves could be the first step toward a structural reconfiguration of NATO — or even a deeper U.S. pullback within the alliance.

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The port and ferry terminal in Helsingborg are bustling with activity. Everything operates with an almost choreographed efficiency. Ferries maneuver slowly; refrigerated trucks wait their turn to board alongside cars, cyclists, and workers who cross the Øresund Strait as if taking a commuter train. After all, only 2.5 miles separate Swedish Helsingborg (population 114,000) from Danish Helsingør. From the waterfront, under the oblique light of northern Europe that lengthens the evenings over the water, the strait is so narrow it is hard to see it as a strategic border. But that maritime line, which looks ordinary on maps, is today one of the flashpoints between Russia and NATO. It is the setting of a gray, hybrid war of maritime sabotage and ghost ships.

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“The era of deportations has begun.” A few months ago, this line from far‑right Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers sounded like a provocation. Now, after the agreement on the EU’s new Return Regulation between Parliament, the member states and the Commission, it reads more like an accurate description of the European Union’s political direction. With the legal framework for sending migrants to deportation camps outside Europe nearly complete, several member states — Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece — have intensified their search for countries willing to host them, mainly in Africa, far from the European continent, according to diplomatic sources. The political battle is over; the geographical one is just beginning.

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The impact, shooting-down, or near-miss of about a dozen Ukrainian drones over the past two months has once again placed the Baltic region at the center of a gray zone where air safety, electronic warfare, and strategic ambiguity blur together. Ukraine says its attack drones, launched toward ports in the Leningrad region in Russia’s northwest, have been diverted by the enemy and redirected against its allies.

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The European Future Combat Air System (FCAS), a joint project led by France and Germany with participation from Spain, has failed because of disagreements between Airbus, the German representative, and Dassault, the French firm. It was the most ambitious European project at a time when the EU says it wants to increase and coordinate military spending to develop shared defense technologies, programs, and platforms — like the one that collapsed on Monday, June 8. What happened with FCAS casts doubt on whether Europe can ever reconcile national sovereignty with the demands of building next-generation, complex weapons systems, at a moment when the EU is trying to bolster its defense sovereignty and the United States is beginning to withdraw its security umbrella. It also adds pressure and lessons for other projects trying to move forward.

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