European governments delivered a blunt rebuff to Donald Trump on Monday, refusing to commit military forces to the Strait of Hormuz as EU foreign ministers gathered in Brussels to grapple with an oil crisis their capitals did not choose and were not consulted about before it began.

The pushback was swift and, in some cases, pointed. Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, posed the question circulating in European capitals with unusual directness: “What does Trump expect a handful or two handfuls of European frigates to do in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful US Navy cannot do?” He added, with no ambiguity, “This is not our war. We have not started it.”

The response landed amid intensifying American pressure. Trump had spent the weekend demanding that Britain, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and other allies send warships to secure the waterway, warning that failure to help would be very bad for NATO’s future. US officials worked through the weekend trying to build support and said they hoped to announce a new coalition within days. Who would join it, and on what terms, remained unresolved as the Brussels meeting got underway.

Germany made its position plain from multiple directions. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Berlin had no intention of joining military operations while the conflict was active, and that NATO first needed clarity on what the US and Israel were actually trying to achieve. “We expect from the US and Israel to inform us, to include us into what they’re doing there,” he told reporters, framing European participation in any future security architecture as contingent on answers Washington had not yet provided. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s spokesperson, Stefan Kornelius, went further, noting that the United States had not consulted Germany before launching the war and that, accordingly, it was not a matter for NATO or the German government. “It is not NATO’s war,” he said. “NATO is an alliance to defend the alliance area.”

Greece said it would not engage in military operations in the strait. Italy’s foreign minister said Rome was not involved in any naval missions that could be extended to the area. Estonia and Poland struck more diplomatic tones — both said they wanted to understand Trump’s strategic goals before making any commitments, with Poland’s Radek Sikorski noting that a formal NATO request would at least be considered carefully through proper channels.

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The one dissenting voice among European foreign ministers came from Denmark. Lars Lokke Rasmussen said Europe should keep an open mind on protecting freedom of navigation, even without endorsing the US-Israeli decision to go to war. “We must face the world as it is, not as we want it to be,” he said, calling for a plan oriented toward de-escalation rather than escalation.

Britain, which Trump had specifically named as a country he hoped would contribute ships, offered the most carefully worded response of any US ally. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said London was working on a collective plan to reopen the strait and restore freedom of navigation but would not be drawn into a wider war. The formulation acknowledged the problem without accepting Trump’s framing of the solution.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas acknowledged the urgency of reopening the waterway but said the bloc first needed to establish what member states were actually willing to do. She added a dimension largely absent from Washington’s public messaging: the strait’s closure, which has pushed oil above $100 a barrel, is directly funding Russia’s war in Ukraine. Moscow’s energy revenues bankroll its military campaign, and every week Hormuz remains closed is a week the Kremlin benefits. The observation reframed the crisis not as a bilateral US-European disagreement but as a problem with cascading consequences reaching well beyond the Middle East.

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On the energy side, the International Energy Agency said Monday it was prepared to release additional oil reserves if the situation deteriorated further. The agency released a record 400 million barrels last week in what its executive director, Fatih Birol, described as the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market — surpassing even the 1973 oil crisis in volume of supply taken offline. Prices have fallen somewhat from their peak, Birol said, but he was direct about the limits of what reserve releases can accomplish. They are a buffer, not a fix. “The reserves are not a lasting solution while passage through the strait remains uncertain,” he said, noting the IEA still held more than 1.4 billion barrels and could act again if needed.

The distance between Washington and its European partners on Monday was not simply a disagreement over ships. It was a disagreement over ownership. Trump is asking allies to share the burden of managing consequences that flow from a war they were not party to planning, executed against a country several of them had active diplomatic channels with, at a moment when their own publics are watching energy prices climb. The legal and political logic of sending European warships into an active combat zone — under whose command, with whose rules of engagement, toward what defined end — is a set of questions the Brussels meeting surfaced clearly and left largely unanswered.

US officials said they still hoped for preliminary commitments, even without specifics. European foreign ministers left Brussels having committed to very little.