The US is calling a meeting in Poland. Not all allies were included

In the near future, Poland will host a meeting organised by US Under Secretary of Defence Elbridge Colby. According to information obtained by „Politico”, representatives from the United Kingdom, France, and the Baltic states have not been invited to the event.

Excluded states

This state of affairs is causing concerns among some European members of the alliance regarding the future plans of the American administration. Anxiety is growing even further as the excluded group includes „top students” who allocate the most resources to defence, thus aligning with the resolutions of the NATO summit in The Hague, as well as the NATO 3.0 concept promoted by Elbridge Colby, which shifts greater responsibility for their own conventional defence onto European allies.

The uninvited nations include the Baltic states and France, whose commitment to strengthening collective defence cannot be denied. In the case of Lithuania and Estonia, it is also worth mentioning the Pentagon’s recent moves regarding a new rotation of American troops in Lithuania and the decision to continue the stationing of an American armoured infantry battalion along with a tank company on Estonian territory. The only country uninvited to the described meeting for which rational reasons can be found is the United Kingdom, whose pace of implementing modernisation changes is far from ideal. This reasoning is also supported by London’s insufficient support for Operation Epic Fury (Donald Trump has publicly criticised the former British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer).

Weakening NATO? Not necessarily

The „Politico” article suggests that Colby’s choice of a limited number of countries may be a move to weaken NATO or a selection of „good and bad” within the North Atlantic Alliance. Responding to such ideas, it is worth recalling here that at the turn of July and August, the US Under Secretary of Defence held meetings with representatives of other countries. At that time, he spoke with, among others, the now „excluded” United Kingdom, Romania, Italy, and Germany.

The upcoming meeting in Poland will likely be a continuation of the Bergen format initiated in Norway in June this year. At that time, representatives from Poland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands took part in talks with Colby. It is possible that following the recent USA-Greenland-Denmark agreement, Copenhagen will join the aforementioned states.

Is this format a threat to NATO? Rather, it is an attempt to accelerate certain work within the alliance and a possible distinction of specific allies. According to Colby, the Bergen group countries have „real defence industry potential and are the ones ready to take on more responsibility for Europe’s conventional defence.” „NATO allies who are quickly fulfilling their Hague spending commitments have the appropriate resources to contribute and are ready to get down to concrete action” – is another quote from Colby regarding these nations.

The Bergen format also appeared literally a few days ago in an update to the US National Defence Strategy for 2026 published by the Pentagon. This format was highlighted by Colby as one of the frameworks he considers to be working effectively. According to the Under Secretary, the above group of nations is intended to serve as an example of the sensibleness of creating smaller, task-focused coalitions, thereby moving away from the policy of multilateralism pursued for years.