Trump presses NATO allies to deliver on 5% defence spending pledge at Ankara summit

Donald Trump lands in Ankara on Monday evening for a NATO summit that his administration has framed as a compliance exercise. Last year in The Hague, the alliance's members signed up to a headline target of 5% of gross domestic product on defence over the next decade, 3.5% for core military spending and 1.5% for associated costs such as infrastructure. The US president now wants to see the receipts.

The Hague pledge and the enforcement test

The speed with which most capitals endorsed the 5% figure last June reflected the political gravity Trump exerts over the alliance. Yet endorsement is not delivery. Spain said at the time it could not reach those levels, and several other governments have voiced quiet reservations about the fiscal sustainability of such a leap. The Ankara gathering is, in the words of Luke Coffey of the Hudson Institute, the "first report card" since The Hague. Coffey argues that if leaders arrive with credible plans, Trump will take a victory lap; if they do not, the alliance faces a confrontation it has spent eighteen months trying to avoid.

Matt Whitaker, the US ambassador to NATO, set the tone in a pre-summit briefing: "President Trump fully expects that all allies will step up immediately and get on the path to 5% and do it with urgency." The language is deliberate. "Immediately" and "with urgency" leave no room for the multi-year budget cycles that govern European defence planning. Mark Rutte, the secretary-general, attempted to pre-empt friction last month by presenting Trump with oversized charts in the Oval Office labelled "The Trump Trillion", a tally of increased spending commitments since 2017. It was a piece of diplomatic theatre designed to flatter the one audience that matters.

NATO 3.0 and the force posture review

Behind the spending demand lies a structural shift the administration calls "NATO 3.0". Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defence for policy, outlined the concept earlier this year: Europe assumes primary responsibility for its own conventional defence, freeing the United States to pivot resources toward the Indo-Pacific. In theory, this is the burden-sharing argument US officials have made for decades. In practice, the execution has been erratic.

Last month, Pete Hegseth used a meeting of NATO defence ministers to announce a six-month review of US forces stationed in Europe. The decision blindsided allies who had assumed any repositioning would be coordinated through the alliance's established planning mechanisms. The surprise was compounded by Trump's own contradictory signals earlier this year, first ordering 5,000 troops out of Europe, then weeks later announcing 5,000 would deploy to Poland. For capitals from Warsaw to Rome, the message is opaque: is the US presence shrinking, shifting, or being used as leverage?

Ukraine, Russia and the Ankara agenda

The war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, remains the alliance's central operational concern. Trump left the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains last month claiming progress on an interim agreement to end the conflict with Iran, a separate track, while G7 partners worked to secure his backing for continued security assistance to Kyiv. He is scheduled to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, having spoken to both the Ukrainian president and Vladimir Putin on 4 July. The White House has not disclosed what, if any, new commitments will emerge from the bilateral.

Liana Fix of the Council on Foreign Relations offers a sobering assessment: "This is the reality for most Europeans. Most are far from being able to defend themselves without the United States, even if they're starting to develop all that." The gap between the 5% aspiration and current capability is measured not in percentage points but in enablers, air defence, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, strategic lift, that Europe has underinvested in for thirty years. Spending more does not instantly create them.

Bilateral fractures and the Erdogan factor

Trump arrives in Ankara carrying a suite of personal grievances with fellow NATO leaders. He predicted Keir Starmer's resignation as British prime minister before it happened, dismissed Giorgia Meloni as having "begged" for a photograph, prompting a furious denial from Rome and the cancellation of a US visit by Italy's foreign minister, and remains on tense terms with Canada's Mark Carney. Even Emmanuel Macron's lavish Versailles dinner has not insulated the French president from Trump's volatility. The president posted a photo of Meloni smiling at him on Sunday with the caption "RESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED."

Against this backdrop, Recep Tayyip Erdogan stands apart. The Turkish president, who hosts the summit, counts Trump as a close friend and has a bilateral meeting scheduled. Turkey's own defence spending has consistently exceeded 2% of GDP, and its defence industry, drones, armoured vehicles, naval platforms, has become a tangible contributor to allied capacity. Erdogan's leverage is practical, not merely personal.

Congressional counterweight

Aware of the presidential unpredictability, a bipartisan Senate delegation is travelling to Ankara for the second consecutive year. Jeanne Shaheen, the New Hampshire Democrat leading the group, put the mission bluntly: "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. That's part of what Congress understands that the administration doesn't seem to." The delegation's presence is a signal to European capitals that the US security guarantee retains deep institutional roots, even as the executive branch applies pressure.

Arctic Sentry and the Greenland subtext

NATO has also sought to accommodate Trump's strategic preoccupations. Earlier this year the alliance launched "Arctic Sentry", a military exercise aimed at countering Russian and Chinese activity in the high north. The exercise doubles as a response to Trump's repeated insistence that the United States should acquire Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, for strategic reasons. Denmark and Greenland have rejected the notion, but the exercise allows the alliance to demonstrate seriousness about Arctic security without endorsing the territorial ambition.

For European governments, the Ankara summit is less about defending the alliance's relevance than about managing a transactional US president who views security guarantees as conditional. The 5% figure is the price of admission. Whether the alliance can pay it without fracturing its own politics, or hollowing out the social spending that sustains public consent, is the question no communiqué will answer.