Allies from both sides of the Atlantic gather in Ankara Tuesday in a key test of the unity of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an alliance that U.S. President Donald Trump has shaken and berated.
The summit arrives against the backdrop of Trump’s repeated criticism of allies’ defense spending and a Pentagon review of U.S. troops across Europe.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has attempted to temper tensions, declaring that European allies have heeded calls from the U.S. to take on a greater burden. Rutte, on a trip to Washington last month, pointed to increased defense spending of 20% by Europe and Canada in the last year.
The secretary-general has welcomed Trump’s wishes for Europeans to take a greater share of the burden, praising the president’s ambitions for NATO and calling for a “defense industrial revolution.”
Previewing the summit, Rutte adopted language used by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other U.S. officials.
“This is NATO 3.0,” Rutte said. “More European-led, equalizing defense spending, but still with the U.S. firmly rooted in NATO.”
European officials say the summit will be focused on the implementation of goals set at last year’s summit at The Hague, where allies agreed to set a 10-year goal to increase defense spending as a share of gross domestic product to 5%.
Amid tensions with Europeans over their contributions to NATO — and the U.S. campaign in Iran — analysts say the lack of a clear win to celebrate in Ankara, unlike The Hague, leaves a degree of uncertainty at the summit as Trump continues to express displeasure with allies.
“The U.S. spends more money on NATO than any other country, by far, to protect them, without getting any benefit,” Trump said last week.
The NATO meetings also come amid an escalation in the war in Ukraine. Allies will look to the venue to signal support for Kyiv and Trump plans to meet with Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.
US withdrawal in Europe
The summit comes after Hegseth admonished allies at a June NATO meeting in Brussels for what he called “shameful” defense contributions to the alliance. He announced a six-month review of U.S. troops’ footprint in Europe.
The U.S. military has already said it would “rightsize” its commitment to the NATO Force Model, a scheme by which allies commit assets in the event of an emergency.
Analysts say changes to the U.S. force posture in Europe, including a canceled rotation of 5,000 soldiers due to deploy to Poland, risk creating short-term gaps.
Trump, who has praised the Poles as allies, later reversed the decision publicly. But the 5,000 troops have not yet deployed.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whittaker, in an interview with CNBC on Monday, said the U.S. military would “do less” in Europe because of the demands of other theaters.
“The target is that Europe takes over the conventional defense of the European continent,” Whitaker said. “So what would you expect if they take it over, you would expect the U.S. to do less. We’re not going away. We’re just doing less because we have global requirements and global challenges.”
Cameron McMillan, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former U.S. Army field artillery officer, said there are “some flaws in that logic.”
Brigade combat teams, which were withdrawn from Romania and scheduled to be withdrawn from Germany, are “designed basically to fight the Russian army in Europe and to deter the Russians from making a move on the Baltics or Poland or making a move towards Kaliningrad,” McMillan said.
“So unless we plan on having a bunch of Abrams tanks swim to Taiwan in a Taiwan contingency, it has much more value in Europe.”
Simmering leader tensions
The president’s inclination to punish allies for perceived grievances leaves doubts that the summit will be a rosy picture of unity in Ankara — as Trump lodges complaints over defense contributions and allies’ role in the U.S. campaign in Iran.
The summit harbors the prospect of unexpected personal brushups, a rare setting where 32 heads of state convene in the same place.
It will be the first meeting between Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni since they traded barbs over Trump’s claim that Meloni “begged” him for a photo at a G7 summit last month.
Meloni, a longtime ally of Trump, denied the claim in a scathing social media video in which she said the president “doesn’t show the same determination toward the enemies of the West or the enemies of the United States,” likely a reference to Russia.
Ukraine on the agenda
Allies are considering a financial commitment to Ukraine, sources told ABC News, as Russia escalates its war there and Kyiv manages to launch successful attacks inside Russia.
Zelenskyy blamed a Russian barrage on Kyiv on the eve of the summit on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desire to divide the alliance.
He wrote on social media that “it is very important” that NATO allies emerge from the summit with a decision to support Ukrainian air defenses.
“As long as the missiles for the Patriots remain in the warehouses of allies, this only encourages Russia to continue destroying residential buildings,” the Ukrainian president added, referring to the American-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system which Kyiv often uses to intercept Russian missiles.”
Laura Galante, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and a former senior U.S. intelligence official, called it “a pretty extraordinary backdrop” for the summit.
“The largest wild card is how the allies react to Ukraine and Zelenskyy being there,” she said.
Analysts and officials have said Ukraine has turned the tide of the war. A report Center for Strategic and International Studies found mounting Russian casualties and halting gains inside Ukraine — concluding that Moscow has suffered a net loss of territory in the country in recent months.
“This is a pretty pivotal moment, and you also have a lot of the drone capability that I think allies look at as their forward deployment mechanism in conflict,” Galante said, adding it would be important “to have the Ukrainians there and saying, ‘Here’s what works and here’s what doesn’t.'”
