WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump secured major concessions from NATO allies at last year’s summit, with most member nations agreeing to his push for significantly higher defense spending. Now, heading into this week’s gathering in Ankara, Turkey, his focus shifts to making sure those promises are kept.
The rapid pace at which most NATO countries have moved toward meeting Trump’s demand — that members spend 5% of their annual gross domestic product on defense over the coming decade — illustrates just how much the U.S. president has transformed the alliance to reflect his priorities. That’s true even as he continues to clash with allies over the conflict involving Iran, his repeated suggestions about acquiring Greenland, and a string of personal disputes with foreign leaders.
“President Trump fully expects that all allies will step up immediately and get on the path to 5% and do it with urgency,” said Matt Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, speaking with reporters ahead of the summit in Ankara.
Trump departed Monday evening for the summit. In the days before leaving, he repeatedly voiced frustration over how much the United States contributes to defense compared to other alliance members. That came despite a recent Oval Office visit from the alliance’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, who brought large charts displayed on easels to illustrate what he called “The Trump Trillion” — the total increase in allied spending commitments since 2017.
Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, described the Ankara summit as the “first report card” following last year’s meeting in The Hague.
“If NATO members play their cards right — if the leaders show up demonstrating a commitment and a reasonable plan to meet these spending targets — then it’ll allow President Trump to take a victory lap,” Coffey said.
Trump returned from last month’s G7 summit in France in good spirits, having received backing from other world leaders for his interim agreement to wind down the conflict with Iran. He spoke positively about the unity among those leaders, who also worked to get Trump on board with increasing security support for Ukraine in its ongoing fight against Russia.
That conflict, now entering its fifth year, is expected to be a central topic at the Ankara summit. The White House confirmed that Trump is scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday. Trump also spoke separately with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 4th.
On the sidelines of the summit, Trump also plans to sit down with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa. The White House has not outlined specific objectives for that meeting, though it comes as Trump has publicly floated the idea of Syria taking a more active role in countering Hezbollah in Lebanon. Al-Sharaa, who led an Islamic insurgent group whose forces drove out former Syrian President Bashar Assad, has publicly stated he has no desire to do so.
Trump also has a separate bilateral meeting scheduled with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the summit’s host and someone Trump considers a close ally. However, no other one-on-one meetings with foreign leaders are on his schedule.
Despite the relatively upbeat atmosphere at the G7, Trump quickly reignited disputes after returning home. He predicted that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer would step down before Starmer made the announcement himself, saying Starmer had “failed badly” on immigration and energy policy. Trump also claimed that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had asked him for a photo opportunity — a claim she forcefully denied, and which led Italy to cancel a planned U.S. visit by its foreign minister.
Trump escalated the situation further on Sunday by posting a photo on social media showing Meloni smiling in his direction, captioning it with the words “RESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED.”
Relations with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney have also remained strained. And while French President Emmanuel Macron hosted Trump at an elaborate dinner at the Palace of Versailles last month, the relationship between the two leaders has not always been without friction.
With those tensions in mind, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators is once again traveling to the NATO summit, aiming to demonstrate that congressional support for the alliance remains strong and to serve as a counterbalance to Trump’s frequently critical stance toward NATO.
“They are our best allies, they are our best trading partners, they are critical to our national security, to our economic success, and we need to encourage those relationships,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who is leading the congressional delegation to Ankara. “That’s part of what Congress understands that the administration doesn’t seem to.”
The summit also arrives as the Trump administration promotes a vision it calls “NATO 3.0,” a framework that envisions European nations shouldering more of their own security responsibilities, freeing the U.S. to redirect its attention to other priorities.
That concept was laid out earlier this year by Elbridge Colby, a U.S. undersecretary of defense, at a meeting of NATO defense ministers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added to the pressure last month with a pointed speech to those same ministers, announcing a six-month review of American troop deployments in Europe — a move that caught many allies off guard, as they had expected to be consulted during any such transition.
Trump himself created confusion earlier this year by appearing to send contradictory signals, announcing plans to send 5,000 troops to Poland just weeks after ordering the same number of forces to be pulled from the continent.
Sen. Shaheen said the NATO 3.0 vision “fails to understand — as this administration has consistently failed to understand — the threat that Putin and Russia are to Europe and subsequently to the United States.”
The 5% GDP spending target agreed upon at last year’s summit in The Hague breaks down as 3.5% for core military spending, with the remainder covering related costs such as infrastructure. Spain indicated at the time that it could not reach those levels, and other members have also raised concerns about the ambition of the goal.
Even with the increased spending pledges, experts caution that much of Europe still depends heavily on the United States for its actual defense capabilities if attacked. The foundational principle of NATO holds that an armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all.
“This is the reality for most Europeans,” said Liana Fix, senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations, noting that most member nations remain far from being able to defend themselves without U.S. support, “even if they’re starting to develop all that.”
Beyond the spending issue, NATO has made other moves to accommodate Trump’s priorities. Earlier this year, the alliance launched “Arctic Sentry,” a NATO-led military exercise designed to counter Russian and Chinese activity in the Arctic region. The exercise is also seen as a response to Trump’s repeated suggestions that the U.S. should acquire Greenland, the semiautonomous Danish territory he has argued is essential for American strategic security.
