BRUSSELS — On his first international trip as Pentagon head, Patrick M. Shanahan entered NATO headquarters on Wednesday with a key question hanging over him: Would he be the stalwart ally and buffer against President Trump’s whims that the former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, had been?

He departed the NATO conference in Brussels on Thursday with the same question still lingering in the air.

When asked by reporters during a press briefing about his commitment to NATO, in light of Mr. Trump’s ambivalence toward the alliance, Mr. Shanahan, the acting defense secretary since Jan. 1, said that he did not see a divergence.

“As Mr. Trump said last month, we’re going to be with NATO 100 percent,” Mr. Shanahan said.

But the president’s habit of lashing out at allies and alliances, and uncertainty about what he might do or tweet next, complicate the job of addressing a long list of security issues facing NATO, including the nearly 18-year-old war in Afghanistan, the fate of a Cold War missile treaty, Russian aggression online and on the ground in Ukraine, and an increasingly assertive and powerful China.

So far, NATO leaders have not received from Mr. Shanahan the kind of reassurance Mr. Mattis provided for two years; in fact, they cannot be sure he will be the United States military chief much longer.

Last year, Mr. Trump discussed withdrawing completely from the nearly 70-year-old alliance, and he told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of NATO.

The president has railed publicly against allies for not meeting the NATO goal of spending 2 percent of their economic output on defense, though they remain five years away from the target date for reaching that level.

With American prodding, some member nations have increased their military spending, but on Thursday, Mr. Shanahan chided Germany for not making the 2 percent goal. The country has settled on reaching roughly 1.5 percent by 2024.

“It has to be more,” he said.

Mr. Shanahan, a former Boeing executive, is stuck between President Trump’s rhetoric and the long shadow of Mr. Mattis, a retired Marine general who resigned from his position in December.

In his resignation letter, Mr. Mattis wrote of his firm belief that “our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships,” and pointed to the divide between him and Mr. Trump on that score as a reason for stepping down.

“Mattis’s departure was an earthquake,” said Jim Townsend, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy under former President Barack Obama. Now NATO is looking to see if Mr. Shanahan is “going to be someone closer to the mold of Mattis or be more like what comes out of the White House.”

On Thursday, after meeting with defense ministers about the NATO training mission in Afghanistan, Mr. Shanahan said there would be “no unilateral troop reduction,” when asked by reporters about allied concerns about a rapid withdrawal.

Even before he flew to Brussels, his trip this week tested his skill in international affairs, starting with a stop in Afghanistan to meet with President Ashraf Ghani, who objects to being excluded from peace talks involving the Trump administration and the resurgent Taliban. He traveled to Iraq and met with Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, days after Iraqi politicians reacted angrily to Mr. Trump’s talk of keeping American troops in that country to “watch Iran.”

Mr. Trump has praised Mr. Shanahan, the deputy secretary under Mr. Mattis, and said that he could be running the Pentagon “for a long time.” But the president has not nominated him — or anyone else — to be defense secretary, and Mr. Shanahan has started to draw fire from some lawmakers who consider him to be out of his element.

On Tuesday, Senator James M. Inhofe, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he did not think Mr. Shanahan would be nominated and that he lacked the “humility” of Mr. Mattis.

Later that day, Mr. Shanahan told reporters in Brussels that “whether there is ‘acting’ next to your name or not, it’s the same job. I’ll do the job the same way.”

“Being thrown into the spotlight while expected to reassure European allies as the top person in charge of the Defense Department is a lot to deal with and uphold and I think European allies are going to expect him to handle that,” said Rachel Rizzo, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security’s Transatlantic Security Program.

But two former American ambassadors to NATO judge that in its 70th year, NATO is “an alliance in crisis,” facing a multitude of crises with an out-of-date strategic vision. In a report that will be published on Friday, the former ambassadors Nicholas Burns and Douglas Lute, who is also a retired Army lieutenant general, describe the alliance as largely unprepared for new kinds of digital warfare and new challenges from China and Russia.

NATO is also challenged by an American president who, “for the first time in history, is not supplying leadership, strategy or support to an alliance that serves American interests,” Mr. Burns said. “There’s hardly been a time when the alliance has been tested on so many fronts with such weak American leadership.”

The report, which praises Mr. Trump’s focus on military spending, also urges Congress to pass legislation to prevent an American withdrawal from NATO.

But Mr. Trump has also produced a nascent European pushback, with countries like France and Germany talking about creating some sort of European army, able to defend European interests without so much reliance on Washington.

The report identifies other key problems ripping at NATO, including “a potentially cancerous threat from within” from the increasingly undemocratic governments of its members Hungary, Poland and Turkey. Controversially, the authors recommend that NATO, which prefers to ignore internal politics, take measures to respond — through political pressure but also, if necessary, by suspending official visits to those countries or their participation in NATO exercises.

NATO’s last strategic review, in 2010, was written before Russian aggression in Ukraine and interference in Western democracies, China’s newly assertive military posture, the rise of the Islamic State, and several new types of cyberwarfare. A new review is badly needed, but that might best come after the Trump presidency, the authors say.

The report is the work of six months and involved discussions with more than 60 diplomats, military officers and analysts in both the United States and Europe.

“We’re trying to ring the village bell on both sides of the Atlantic,” Mr. Burns said.

Eric Schmitt and Julian Barnes contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.

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