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By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon's deliberations about restructuring parts of the U.S. military, including potentially giving up the United States' role as the head of NATO forces in Europe and merging commands, could pose challenges, the top U.S. general in Europe cautioned on Thursday.
U.S. lawmakers have expressed alarm at the internal discussions at the Pentagon, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has complained about having too many four- and three-star generals on the payroll.
U.S. Army General Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. general in Europe, told lawmakers that merging U.S. military commands in Europe and Africa would be a stretch.
"I would have the responsibility for 50 more countries... it would be a stretch," Cavoli told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
U.S. Africa Command was made into a separate command in 2008 in a nod to the national security interests the United States had in the region.
Hegseth is also considering no longer having a U.S. military official as NATO's supreme allied commander Europe (SACEUR), a position that has only ever been held by an American, officials have told Reuters.
Cavoli, who is currently the head of U.S. European Command and SACEUR, said that it would pose challenges to nuclear command and control and open up the possibility of U.S. troops being led by a non-U.S. military official.
"I think those are things that would have to be considered carefully," Cavoli said.
The potential changes come amid concerns in Europe about the future of NATO, the transatlantic alliance that has been the bedrock of European security for the past 75 years.
SUPPORT TO EUROPE
The U.S. military has more than 100,000 troops on the continent, but Hegseth has told European colleagues that they should not assume that the United States' presence will last forever.
Republican Senator Eric Schmitt said that for decades Europe had blown off U.S. concerns about how much the continent spends on its defenses.
"Maybe we should have a conversation about the Supreme Allied Commander role. Maybe having an American general in that seat furthers this ruse," Schmitt said.
He quoted Dwight Eisenhower, once SACEUR, who wrote: "If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project (NATO) will have failed."
European belief in the U.S. as the continent's ultimate protector against any attack from Russia has been severely shaken by President Donald Trump’s attempted rapprochement with Moscow and heavy pressure on Kyiv as he seeks to end the war.
During the hearing, Cavoli underscored that despite Kyiv appearing to have resolved some of its shortages of troops, any U.S. cutoff in provision of weapons and intelligence to Ukraine would be extremely harmful to its war effort.
"It would obviously have a rapid and deleterious effect on their ability to fight," he said.
The comments came after Trump temporarily cut off some assistance to Ukraine after an Oval Office blow-up with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Marguerita Choy)
