Finally, Washington has not made any formal demands of NATO. At a closed-door meeting of ambassadors on Tuesday, the U.S. repeated its pleas for allies to help, but did not make any specific requests to the alliance, the two diplomats said.
Yet with the war already in its third week, doing nothing comes with its own risks for NATO.
Washington has already withdrawn equipment, including F-35 fighter jets, from a NATO exercise in Norway, while the U.K. has diverted its HMS Dragon destroyer away from activities linked to the alliance’s new Arctic mission to the eastern Mediterranean.
Defending against Iranian drone and missile counter-attacks has also forced European countries to burn through air defense missiles, depleting stockpiles and hampering NATO’s aim to bolster air defenses, said Wezeman, the analyst. France has already warned its stockpile of air-to-air MICA missiles is running low.
It may be only a “matter of weeks” until European countries are forced to decide whether to earmark future deliveries of air defense systems for their Gulf allies or Ukraine, he said.
“Over a longer period of time, it will put a dent in the planning for how to build up the European defences,” he said. “And it has an immediate effect on the capacity of Ukraine to defend itself.”
“We’re not starting from a place of surplus … we’re going to get stretched even more thin,” the third NATO diplomat acknowledged.