United States Air Force via Wikimedia Commons
When Your Ally Is Not an Ally Anymore
Lilith Edwards
Halle Foundation/AGI Intern
Lilith Edwards is a spring 2026 Halle Foundation Intern at the American-German Institute and a graduate of Emory University where she majored in German Studies and minored in Linguistics. During her time in university and with support from the Halle Foundation, she lived and studied in Vienna and Freiburg, immersing herself in and learning about the history and dialects of the respective regions. Prior to joining the American-German Institute, Lilith taught in a dual-language German immersion program to elementary school children in Atlanta, Georgia, where she received special training for second language and immersion instruction.
Lilith’s interest in fostering the American-German relationship stems from a personal interest in the intersections of various cultures and a desire to facilitate connection and knowledge-sharing amongst international communities. Her research interests are in climate policy, sustainability efforts, migration policy, and public discourse on civil rights and identity.
Recently, the United States has seen immense turnover in policies and practices toward the LGBTQ+ community. One such reversal was the exclusion of transgender persons from the U.S. military. Alone, this reversal has not had a huge effect on U.S. defense partnerships, but it has played its role in shaking the confidence of the country’s allies and raising questions about the direction it will go in the coming years. Once a supporter of LGBTQ+ military policy, the United States now follows a different path, one that worries its NATO allies.
LGBTQ+ Service in NATO Countries
NATO countries have never been more inclusive. Out of the thirty-two member countries, only Turkey bans all LGBTQ+ people from military service, with every other member allowing homosexual persons to serve and more than half allowing transgender persons as well. Inclusion is not uniform amongst members, but in line with the mantra of strength through diversity, an evolution of NATO’s commitment to collective defense and key values, many have taken great efforts in the past sixty years to open their militaries to the LGBTQ+ community.
The shift started around 1970 with some countries, like Germany and Sweden, slightly loosening military policies disciplining or discriminating against homosexual service members and formally began with the Netherlands allowing homosexual persons to openly serve in its military in 1974, the first country in Europe to do so. The movement then gained traction through the end of the twentieth century as several members slowly shed bans on LGBTQ+ service. In 1979, Germany ended its stance on homosexuality as a cause for dismissal from the Bundeswehr; in 1986, Italy reversed its ban on homosexuality amongst soldiers; and in 1993, the United States first allowed gay people to serve, although not openly, under its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy.
Such policies were groundbreaking, but lacked breadth and depth until 2000, when the EU passed legislation forbidding workplace discrimination, including discrimination based on sexual orientation. The next fifteen years then saw NATO members passing legislation to allow some degree of LGBTQ+ military service almost yearly, with some members passing policies to initially open their militaries to LGB persons, as was the case for several Balkan countries, and others taking further steps to open up to the broader LGBTQ+ community.
The extent to which these policies brought about significant and lasting change varied, though. Many member countries achieved some degree of admission for LGBT service members by 2014, with the exception of Greece and Turkey, but were still working to implement measures to protect and support them. Even now, international LGBTQ+ military policy is far from uniform. Some countries are so embroiled in debates around policy that decisions related to gender or sexual orientation often become ideological and political battlegrounds. In Poland, for example, the simple inclusion of a gender training course for military operations was cancelled as politicians cried out against “woke culture” and “leftist ideology.” Despite that, the twenty-first century has seen NATO countries as a whole undergo immense changes toward greater inclusion.
Transgender Service in Question
Greater inclusion does not mean inclusion for all. Allied militaries have come a long way in terms of accepting homosexuality amongst service members, but homosexuality is only one part of LGBTQ+ inclusion. The latest front in this struggle is policy around transgender individuals.
Twenty-four out of thirty-two NATO countries have policies allowing both homosexual and transgender persons into the military. That said, widespread recognition of the transgender community, both in the military and society at large, only began recently. Because of that, many of these countries still lack full protections and support for trans individuals. Amongst NATO allies, Germany and the United States offer two different approaches.
Germany is an example of a more inclusive approach. A result of its 2006 policy against discrimination of any kind in the workplace, the Bundeswehr has allowed transgender troops for twenty years. In 2017, the Bundeswehr established an office for discrimination and violence, following efforts by Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen to prioritize support for transsexual and homosexual personnel. Under causes for reportable discrimination, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” were explicitly included, marking a step beyond mere acceptance and toward the protection of transgender persons. In addition to internal efforts to make the Bundeswehr inclusive, Germany is also one of only seven NATO countries to have an advocacy group specifically for LGBTQ+ service members, QueerBw.[1] Transgender individuals today can serve openly in Germany, and while the internal climate of the Bundeswehr is still adjusting to full acceptance, it is adjusting.
As some countries waver on LGBTQ+ rights, some of the United States’ biggest allies are embracing inclusivity in NATO and defense as a whole.
Until the first Trump administration, the United States maintained a similar pace in adopting progressive policy as its European allies. From 1993 until 2011, the U.S. military was under President Clinton’s DADT policy, which nominally opened the military to LGB persons, though it maintained stringent restrictions in cases of one’s identity becoming public, with “pay, retirement benefits, and entire career…always at risk.” The end of DADT saw the start of real change, allowing LGB individuals to serve openly, and in 2016, President Obama extended service to transgender persons as well. This policy brought the United States up to speed with its European allies’ progress, feeding a growing cultural climate of gender acceptance. However, President Trump opposed the policy, and in his first term, it was nearly repealed. Transgender military service remained through 2024 under President Biden, until the second Trump administration removed it in 2025, citing transgender members as a military weakness and liability. Since then, transgender individuals have been barred from joining the military, and those in active service have been forced out. The United States remains polarized on transgender rights in and outside of the military, leaving the country’s potential future policies unclear.
A Shaken System
While U.S. policy toward transgender troops is a domestic issue, its repercussions are international, causing doubt amongst defensive allies at a time when international unity continues to be tested by conflict abroad.
In the broad scope of international security, the United States’ transgender policy has not had a large impact on NATO. Founded in the name of international security, NATO routinely puts members’ differences aside to achieve its objectives. So long as those differences do not threaten NATO’s ability to operate, members would not challenge policies on troop recruitment and retention; for example, NATO has never taken action toward Turkey, one of its greatest troop contributors, despite its extremely restrictive military policy on homosexuality. That is not to say that U.S. allies are content with its new restrictions on transgender soldiers. Among individual members, dissatisfaction with the U.S. policy has spread.
In Germany and the Netherlands, troops have come forward to their LGBTQ+ organizations with fears about working with the United States or being stationed there. Amidst these concerns are questions about the country’s ability to determine a soldier’s fitness to serve and about discrimination for transgender soldiers becoming a stepping stone for discrimination of other groups. The Vice-Chairman of SHK, the Netherlands’ LGBTQ+ military advocacy group, goes so far as to say that “LGBTQ+ individuals serve as the proverbial ‘canary in the coal mine’” for social progress in the United States and internationally. In Germany, concerns are so high that QueerBW wrote a letter to the Federal Ministry of Defense seeking elucidation on efforts Germany would take to protect its queer troops serving on U.S. soil under NATO operations. The United States, NATO’s biggest defensive partner, has transgender soldiers in member countries uncertain about serving with such a big military ally that is not also a social ally.
Adjacent to the military, people are protesting the ban, too. At the Hague in the Netherlands, protests greeted President Trump and former Prime Minister Orbán of Hungary, criticizing their restrictive LGBTQ+ policies as they arrived for a NATO summit in June of 2025. On U.S. bases across Germany, high schoolers and middle schoolers organized walkouts in protest of the DEI and LGBTQ+ rollbacks. At the Ramstein Air Base, students even planned to take their cause to the headquarters of the NATO Allied Air Command and U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Africa. At the U.S. European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, military families booed the U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his role in the ban.
Implications
The U.S. decision to reverse its policy on transgender troops was not unexpected, but it was disconcerting. As NATO countries work to invest in defense and enlarge their armies, the United States has taken a stance to limit its own, and in a way that worries the international troops it will be serving alongside.
Momentum for a diverse and inclusive military culture has been building for decades across Western countries. The presence of social media and the interconnectivity of the twenty-first century have only expedited this progress, bringing greater visibility to the LGBTQ+ experience. This is especially true for the generation growing up with this technology, the same generation that is entering militaries across the world. As some countries waver on LGBTQ+ rights, some of the United States’ biggest allies are embracing inclusivity in NATO and defense as a whole.
Time and time again, countries have discovered that diversity has brought strength to their military: in ending racial discrimination in militaries, allowing women to serve, decriminalizing homosexuality amongst soldiers. The biggest strength of diversity is simple: a large, loyal military. The current U.S. administration claims that identifying as transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle,” but troops do not agree. As one Dutch soldier put it, “your dedication to service does not change because of your transition.” This harkens to a similar idea in the women’s movement to join the British military, the idea that “armed forces roles should be determined by ability, not gender.” Queer troops are no less capable than non-queer troops, passing the same entry tests as any recruit. Disallowing them only diminishes the size of a fighting force and strategic knowledge base. Positive LGBTQ+ policy also offers militaries wider access to tech-savvy individuals from queer communities. In the modern age of intelligent warfare, physical prowess is not prioritized like it used to be nor does the technology care about the gender makeup of the person operating it. As Germany’s first transgender military commander, Colonel Anastasia Biefang put it, “an enemy drone couldn’t care less who you are or what kind of person you are—it makes absolutely no distinctions.”
[1] These countries are the United States, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy.
