CONSTANTA, ROMANIA – Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in Romania was built to make Americans feel at home. Its streets are named Alabama, Ohio, Alaska and George Washington. The base has hosted U.S. troops since 1999 and supported America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Last year, about half of the approximately 2,000 American troops in Romania, most of them living at the base, departed as the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump began a radical realignment of the U.S. military presence in Europe. In Romania, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization country bordering Ukraine, the departures caused alarm: MK, as the base is known, sits on the alliance’s eastern flank at a time when Russian drones have repeatedly crossed into NATO territory.
But during a visit to MK in July, the base told a more complicated story about Trump’s effort to remake NATO. Nine U.S. KC-135 Stratotankers were parked there, deployed to refuel American jets and bombers during the Iran war. Their crews and support staff had partially offset the earlier troop departures, a reminder that Washington still relies heavily on European bases.
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