Redistribution of NATO Command

Monday 16 February 2026

In early February 2026 NATO agreed a quiet but symbolically loaded rearrangement of who sits at the top of several of its operational headquarters. The United States will, over time, hand the command of two four-star Joint Force Commands to European allies—Joint Force Command Naples in Italy and Joint Force Command Norfolk in Virginia—while European allies will also take rotational responsibility for Joint Force Command Brunssum. As a result, all three of NATO’s standing Joint Force Commands will be led by Europeans. 

At first glance this looks like an American retreat. In practice it is better understood as a redistribution inside a system that remains, by design, Atlantic rather than merely European—one in which Washington is seeking political proof that Europe is growing up, while also ensuring that the parts of NATO command that matter most in a shooting war still run through American hands. The same agreement leaves the United States in command of all three theatre component commands—Allied Air Command, Allied Land Command and (newly) Allied Maritime Command—while maintaining the long-standing American hold over the position of Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), the officer who commands NATO’s Allied Command Operations from SHAPE in Belgium. 

That mixture—European faces in the operational shop windows, American control of the enabling machinery—tells you what the decision is really for.

Why the United States led so much of NATO for so long

NATO was built during the Cold War around a central political bargain: the United States would commit to the defence of Europe, including with nuclear guarantees, and European allies would accept an integrated command structure that made American reinforcement credible, rapid and co-ordinated. In that world, senior American command was not merely prestige; it was reassurance. It signalled to Moscow that any conflict would swiftly involve US forces and US decision-making—removing the dangerous ambiguity that had fuelled miscalculation in earlier European crises.

The most visible expression of that bargain has been SACEUR. By tradition SACEUR has been an American officer, dual-hatted as the commander of US European Command—a structural link that hardwires American national command into NATO’s warfighting headquarters. 

Beneath SACEUR sits the operational level: headquarters that plan and run campaigns, co-ordinate national formations and turn political intent into orders. Today those operational headquarters include the three Joint Force Commands—Brunssum, Naples and Norfolk—each capable of commanding large-scale operations in a crisis. 

Historically, American primacy at this level varied by region and era. Naples, for example, descends from the old Allied Forces Southern Europe headquarters created in the early 1950s, a Mediterranean command that, for decades, was typically led by a US Navy admiral—reflecting both geography and the centrality of sea control to reinforcement and nuclear posture. (Its modern form as Joint Force Command Naples dates from NATO’s post-Cold War restructuring.) 

Norfolk is newer. NATO stood up Joint Force Command Norfolk after the alliance rediscovered—under pressure from Russian behaviour—that the Atlantic is not a peaceful backwater but the strategic bridge without which Europe cannot be reinforced. The decision to create the command was taken at the 2018 Brussels Summit and it was activated in 2019, with an explicit focus on protecting transatlantic sea lines of communication. 

So American leadership at NATO’s operational level was, for decades, a consequence of America’s role as the indispensable reinforcer, the principal provider of high-end enablers, and the political anchor against European fragmentation.

What has changed—politically and militarily

Two forces have been pulling against that older arrangement.

The first is European. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine forced a continental awakening. European allies increased defence spending, expanded forces, relearnt logistics, re-equipped ammunition stocks and made rearmament politically respectable again. Finland and Sweden joined NATO, changing the alliance’s centre of gravity northwards and turning the High North into a central theatre rather than a distant flank. 

The second force is American—and it is bluntly political. President Trump’s administration has pressed allies to shoulder more responsibility and has framed NATO’s future as something closer to a “European-led NATO”. Reuters reported the February 2026 command shifts in exactly this context: a demand signal from Washington that the Europeans must not merely pay more, but also lead more. 

NATO’s own communique language is carefully balanced: “more fairly share responsibility”, Europeans “play a more prominent role”, but also “clear the US commitment” including maintaining SACEUR. The sentence is doing a great deal of diplomatic labour. 

What is being handed over

The practical core of the decision is this:

• The United Kingdom will take over Joint Force Command Norfolk.

• Italy will take over Joint Force Command Naples.

• Germany and Poland will share Joint Force Command Brunssum on a rotational basis.

Taken together, that means Europeans will hold all three four-star Joint Force Commands at the operational level. 

But NATO simultaneously confirmed that the United States will lead all three theatre component commands—air, land and maritime—adding Allied Maritime Command to the two (air and land) it already led. 

It is hard to overstate what that implies. Joint Force Commands are the conductors of campaigns. Theatre component commands provide the orchestral sections—the specialist command-and-control that makes air tasking orders, maritime picture compilation, anti-submarine warfare integration, missile defence, deep strike co-ordination and large-scale land manoeuvre function at speed. In a major war, component commands are where the operational tempo is won or lost.

So, the alliance is Europeanising the senior leadership of its operational headquarters, while Americanising—or at least firmly retaining—the three functional commands that generate day-to-day war-fighting effects.

The likely practical consequences

1. A more European NATO—without a less American NATO

The most immediate consequence is political messaging. European publics and parliaments will see their own flags atop headquarters that matter. American voters will be shown a NATO in which Europeans are no longer merely receiving protection but are visibly running the machine.

Yet the hard architecture of American commitment remains in place: SACEUR stays American, and the theatre component commands sit with US leadership. This is not disengagement. It is a rebalancing designed to be legible to domestic audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

2. Real shifts in career pipelines, planning culture and coalition habits

Operational headquarters are not ceremonial postings. They shape doctrine, exercise design, contingency planning, and the informal networks through which crises are managed. A British-led Norfolk will, over time, recruit, mentor and promote a different cohort of planners than an American-led Norfolk. An Italian-led Naples will naturally draw in different staff emphases and regional instincts, particularly in the Mediterranean.

This matters because NATO’s great strength is not merely equipment but habit—shared procedures, shared language, shared assumptions about risk. Changing who leads changes the habits, slowly—like shifting the current in a river rather than moving a dam.

3. The High North becomes an organisational test case

Norfolk is no longer simply an “Atlantic” headquarters in the abstract. In December 2025, Reuters reported NATO’s restructuring to place all Nordic countries under Norfolk’s oversight, reflecting the growing operational importance of the High North. 

Then on 11 February 2026, NATO launched “Arctic Sentry”, an Arctic mission that will be led by Joint Force Command Norfolk. That is the context in which the United Kingdom is expected to inherit the command: not a quiet staff billet, but a headquarters with a live and politically sensitive operational portfolio, sitting at the junction of North America, Greenland, the GIUK (Greenland / Iceland / United Kingdom) gap and the increasingly contested Arctic sea lanes.

The practical consequence is that Britain’s military leadership will be tested on a theatre where anti-submarine warfare, space-based sensing, undersea infrastructure protection and rapid reinforcement planning converge—exactly the kind of multidomain complexity that NATO has been trying to re-master since 2014.

4. Southern Europe and the Mediterranean will feel the change, but not necessarily in the way critics fear

Naples has long been a hub for operations and contingency planning in Europe’s south—ranging historically from Balkan stabilisation to Mediterranean security concerns. An Italian commander may bring sharper political instincts for the Mediterranean littoral, North African spillovers and the diplomatic sensitivities of operating near contested maritime spaces.

Some will argue that a European-led Naples is weaker because it is no longer a direct extension of the US Navy’s European command culture. That risk exists, especially if national staffing becomes parochial. But the counter-argument is more persuasive: Italy has deep regional stakes, is structurally committed to the theatre and can lead with a legitimacy that sometimes eludes Washington in southern debates. The question will not be whether Italy can command—it will be whether allies provide the personnel, intelligence-sharing and lift capabilities needed to make Naples’ plans executable.

5. The United States consolidates “how” war is fought while Europe takes more responsibility for “where” and “when”

This is the most important operational inference. By holding air, land and maritime component commands, the United States retains disproportionate influence over the alliance’s functional war-fighting integration—air tasking, maritime picture management, land component synchronisation. 

Meanwhile by Europeanising the Joint Force Commands, NATO is signalling that Europeans will increasingly decide, plan and command major operations—while still relying heavily on American enablers and functional expertise.

In other words Europe is being asked to become the alliance’s operating system administrator, while the United States retains many of the critical drivers.

6. Implementation will be slow—which is the point

NATO says the changes will be implemented incrementally over the coming years in line with scheduled personnel rotations. That gradualism is not bureaucratic inertia; it is risk management. You do not swap senior command arrangements abruptly in an alliance that is simultaneously deterring Russia and absorbing two new members. The slow roll-out gives NATO time to adjust staffing, communications systems, and exercise cycles—and to spot problems before they become failures in a crisis.

The deeper strategic meaning

If you want the short interpretation without the slogans, it is this.

Washington is trying to lock in a Europe that is capable of leading so that the United States can sustain its global posture without being accused—at home—of underwriting wealthy allies indefinitely. Europe is trying to lock in a United States that remains committed, so that deterrence does not fray at the seams in the years it will take to rebuild European mass and depth.

These command changes are a compromise that serves both aims. They do not make NATO less Atlantic. They make NATO’s Atlantic bargain more saleable to the voters who will be asked to fund it.

And, as Arctic Sentry already illustrates, the test will be practical rather than rhetorical—whether European-led operational headquarters can generate plans that move forces, protect sea lanes and respond to crises faster than Russia can create them.