NATO summit: Trump continues to show off and Europe focuses on supporting the alliance

The NATO summit, in which the alliance’s leaders met in the Turkish capital, Ankara, and which ended last Wednesday, was a tale of two summits. The first summed up US President Donald Trump’s dominance of the news, with the series of complaints he made, the grievances and insults directed at his NATO colleagues, his sudden fluctuations in tone and mood, and his decision during the meeting to launch new air strikes on Iran.

As usual, Trump’s goals were multiple: the alliance itself, some of the alliance’s leaders, and their multiple failures to show loyalty to him.

But the second summit concerned the alliance itself, as it sought to demonstrate its commitment to increasing military spending, strengthening transatlantic industrial cooperation, and continuing to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.

That summit was marked by quiet and steady progress toward a new kind of NATO, the one Trump says he wants, in which the Europeans bear the primary responsibility for the continent’s conventional defense, allowing Washington to focus its resources on the threat of China’s rise.

“They are truly two peaks,” said the distinguished researcher at the German Marshall Fund, which is based in Brussels.

He added during an interview last Wednesday: “You have all the pre-existing concerns about Trump’s agenda, some of which emerged yesterday, when he listed all his grievances.”

But European leaders ignored Trump’s insults and insults, in large part because they were familiar to them and, at least in Ankara, specific threats or actions that would undermine the alliance.

“Trump’s insults and repeated empty threats were losing their impact,” said Nathalie Toksi, a professor at Johns Hopkins University of Advanced International Studies. She added: “If he had said that he would withdraw about 40,000 soldiers from Europe, that is, specify what he would do, that would have had an influential impact, but given that his threats are still vague, they do not carry any meaning.” Toksi added that the Trump summit was a “political show.”

But the director of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, Jana Buglerin, said that “Trump’s hostile rhetoric towards Europe still has an impact.” She added: “This weakens confidence in the United States, but other leaders are starting to get used to it.”

The irony is that while Trump’s attention is still focused on what he describes as the alliance’s mistakes, NATO is working hard and quietly to change itself exactly as Trump demands.

At the Ankara summit, the alliance highlighted intense new transatlantic cooperation between military industrial companies, which are investing to attract the huge spending provided by the allies under American pressure. This is another way for NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to make clear to Trump that American companies and interests benefit from the new NATO commitments.

Last Tuesday, Rutte said, “The allies concluded new arms deals worth $50 billion, and agreed to invest 27 billion euros, or approximately $31 billion, in the storage and distribution of fuel pipelines, including on NATO’s eastern flank.”

Rutte did his best, partly through “sycophancy,” to make clear to Trump that the allies were fulfilling their obligations. During a visit to Washington before the summit, he displayed graphs in the Oval Office, showing additional defense spending exceeding $1.2 trillion since Trump’s first term, including a 20% increase in 2025. One of the graphs bore a title in large gold letters: “Trump’s Trillion.”

Last year, during the NATO summit in The Hague, the allies believed that a commitment to spending more money on defense (5%) of national income by 2035 would satisfy Trump.

But it became clear this year that money alone is not enough. Trump renewed his threat to seize Greenland, a territory belonging to a NATO ally, and complained strongly about the allies’ lack of support for his war on Iran, even though he did not inform them of it or ask for their help. By the end of the summit, last Wednesday, Trump showed a lot of “flexibility” in his closing press conference, saying that “the summit this year showed a lot of love and unity.”

According to what French President Emmanuel Macron said, Trump did not criticize the allies in the closed session on Wednesday, although he frequently stressed the need for Europeans to take the increase in military spending seriously.

But according to former National Security Council official and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, Tori Taussig, what is most surprising is the contrast between Rutte’s messages and Trump’s messages, as the allies were spending more money and providing more support to Ukraine. Taussig added: “But the United States and Trump were making their own show, as the president continues to attack allies.”

In the end, Taussig said, “The Americans were screaming into the air, while the Europeans were moving forward.”

About the New York Times

. The summit was marked by quiet and steady progress toward a new kind of NATO, in which the Europeans bear the primary responsibility for the continent’s conventional defense, allowing Washington to focus its resources on the threat of China’s rise.