Since the return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2025, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have been caught between two fires. On one side is the immediate and long-term military threat from Russia. On the other is the increasingly unpredictable behavior of their main security partner, the United States. When Trump floated the possibility of the United States leaving NATO in April 2026, the three Baltic states were reminded that the amount of time they have to strengthen their defenses while still under Washington’s military protection may be finite.

With that in mind, the leaders of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia know better than to confront Trump. Instead, they have expressed agreement that Europe should be doing more to ensure its own security and that NATO countries should raise defense spending above 2 percent of GDP. Pressure from Washington is presented not as a risk, but as a call to action.

This tactic of not challenging the United States is not motivated by naivety or an attempt to curry favor. It’s a bid to buy time. The Baltic states, which share 1,500 kilometers of land border with Russia and Belarus, do not have close ties with the current U.S. administration: over the last year, contact has mostly been on the sidelines of international summits or at meetings between U.S. officials and their counterparts from all three countries. There have been no bilateral summits or official visits.

For the region, this is both good and bad: bad because the Baltic states are obviously not of much interest to Trump and his team, and good because the channels of communication with Washington remain open. It’s better for Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to avoid attracting unnecessary attention so that cooperation continues for as long as inertia allows.

One reason for the caution of the Baltic states when it comes to Trump is linked to the need to retain a U.S. military presence. Estonia has said it hosts about 600 U.S. service members; Latvia has a continuous rotational U.S. contingent; and Lithuania has rotating U.S. heavy battalions and an additional artillery unit. Numbers, though, are not that important. As long as U.S. military personnel are physically present in the Baltics, they could be killed or injured in the first days of a conventional Russian attack, increasing the cost of escalation for the Kremlin, and meaning a war would not just be a “European problem,” but a direct challenge to Washington. 

If the United States withdraws its troops before Europe manages to fill its defense gaps, then the deterrent will inevitably weaken. Washington would be much less involved in the initial phase of any conflict, and Trump would be able to say—as he likes doing—that a war in Europe is a European problem. Accordingly, the Baltic states are currently trying to ensure a U.S. military contingent remains in place for as long as possible.

Another priority for the Baltic states is addressing the dynamics of the first days of a potential war. For many years, NATO’s strategic thinking assumed that frontline forces would absorb the initial blow, after which the alliance’s main forces would arrive to liberate lost territory. However, for the Baltic states, this was always unacceptable. For them, it’s not an abstract debating point whether or not their allies will fight for Narva, Daugavpils, or Marijampolė. In addition, a NATO assumption that territory would be lost is seen as an incentive for Moscow.

Such worries deepened after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Russia seized territory of a similar size to an entire Baltic state within just a few days. And the behavior of the Russian army in occupied areas of Ukraine showed what a high price locals would pay. As a result, NATO’s rhetoric began to change.

After the Madrid summit in June 2022, NATO announced that it was important to defend every inch of member territory; at the Vilnius summit in 2023, it unveiled new regional plans and committed to strengthening frontline defenses; and, in 2024, it stated that its mission was now to make sure any potential enemy had no opportunity for aggression in the first place. 

The Baltic states have been realizing these commitments on the ground by replacing a symbolic military presence with a capable force (large military units, deployed equipment, developed logistics, fortifications, and concentrated air defense systems).   

Indeed, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has given the countries on NATO’s eastern flank a much better understanding of their priorities. The main issue for them is not a theoretical discussion about how to increase military spending, but what is needed on the ground: counter-mobility infrastructure on the border, layered air defenses, anti-drone systems, sensors, ammunition depots, and infrastructure to receive allied military units. This has given rise to the Baltic Defense Line, new plans for developing the armed forces in all three countries, and a focus on countering the threat from drones.

The problem is that there has not been enough time to implement all these new plans and commitments. They require not only trained units, ammunition, equipment, and financing, but—most importantly—the sort of production capacity that Europe has not managed to achieve in the four years of fighting in Ukraine. In other words, this is a process that will take years, not months.

If U.S. protection disappears, major European countries will switch their focus away from these issues—instead, they are likely to seek to plug the gaps in their own defense capabilities, and rearm. For the Baltic countries, that would be a very dangerous moment: when old defenses have lapsed, and new ones haven’t yet been built.

Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia have never seen European military might as a particularly attractive prospect. They were skeptical about the idea of a European army long before Trump. Back in the 2010s, Latvian diplomats argued that strengthening the EU’s military capabilities was only welcome if it enhanced NATO—not replaced it.

When the Baltic states call for Europe to spend more on defense, therefore, they are not suggesting that this could be a substitute for U.S. capabilities. On the contrary, they believe a sudden break with Washington before Europe’s rearmament is complete would be the worst possible outcome. 

This is why the Baltic states are unwilling to argue with Trump, and are quick to praise Europe for increasing defense spending, building fortifications, accelerating procurement, and, at the same time, preserving the U.S. military presence. They don’t need to show that Europe can manage without the United States; they are trying to buy time so that if Trump does end up losing patience with NATO, a U.S. departure does not lead to a defense catastrophe for their region.