5 Things To Watch as Trump Heads to the NATO Summit

NATO leaders from all 32 member states will gather in Ankara, Turkey, on Tuesday and Wednesday under a cloud of uncertainty: Will Europe’s surge in defense spending be enough to satisfy President Donald Trump and shore up confidence in America’s commitment to the alliance?

“The Europeans are seeing an America that is collaborative, ambiguous and hostile, all at the same time,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.

Here are five things to watch for as the summit gets underway.

Trump Card

President Donald Trump has demanded NATO countries spend more money on their defense. Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

Allies will aim to show unity and avoid drama. But Trump could set off fireworks if he harps on his ambitions to acquire Greenland, blasts allies for failing to back U.S. military action against Iran or stokes his feud with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte probably won’t call Trump “daddy” again, but he is likely to flatter the president with credit for a major boost in allies’ spending. NATO countries have pledged to spend 5% of their gross domestic product on defense and have collectively spent roughly $1 trillion on defense over the past decade.

The White House signaled that the honeymoon is over when it comes to last year’s spending pledge. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker, in a call with reporters Sunday, pointed to Poland, Nordic countries and Germany for making progress but said that “many others are lagging behind” and that Trump expects every ally to “step up immediately” and reach the target.

Trump leaves Washington on Monday and arrives in Ankara on Tuesday for two days of diplomacy and a planned press conference Wednesday before returning home.

“Turkey may be rocky,” Matthew Kroenig, of the Atlantic Council think tank, said of the summit. “I heard one senior official say that the European allies are arrogant, that they made this big 5% defense spending pledge, and they think they’re done, but they’re not following through.”

Open Arms

Europe, which is spending more because it fears America might pull some troops and high-end equipment from the continent, is trying to convert those euros into hard steel.

Trump administration officials said they expect new procurement frameworks and defense-industrial partnerships to be among the summit’s biggest tangible deliverables.

Countries in Europe are striving to establish a self-reliant defense industry to manufacture the weapons they need to stand up to Moscow — but they can’t ramp up as fast or as fully as they need to without American support. At the same time, Washington has frustrated its allies by holding back deliveries of weapons so the Pentagon can refill stockpiles drained by the Iran war.

Allies will try to square the circle at a daylong defense industry forum Tuesday, which is expected to showcase tens of billions of dollars in contracts and new co-production agreements with the United States. Germany’s push to make more American weapons on German soil, if successful, could produce one of Ankara’s bigger announcements.

Kyiv Confidence

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could focus more on European allies at the summit than the United States. Virginia Mayo/AP

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to project strength in Ankara after unleashing a wave of deep-strike drone attacks inside Russia designed to make the war economically and politically unsustainable for President Vladimir Putin.

Trump, after a call Saturday with Putin, is expected to meet Wednesday with Zelenskyy in his ongoing effort to end the war, officials said.

Zelenskyy, meanwhile, despite some recent praise from Trump, will be less focused on the U.S. as he looks for help. (He recently called for a joint European project to build anti-ballistic missile systems.) The Trump administration’s pause on weapons deliveries to Ukraine and foot-dragging on spending $400 million in Ukraine aid mean the taps are nearly off in Washington, and Zelenskyy knows it.

“This will be the first summit or such meeting where Zelenskyy isn’t just desperately thinking, ‘How do I get the U.S. on board,’ but ‘How do I continue to take advantage of the things that are going well,’ given the reality that the U.S. isn’t going to do more,” said Phil Gordon, a Brookings Institution scholar and former senior Biden administration official.

Mixed Signals

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in mid-June a six-month review of U.S. force posture in Europe. Aaron Schwartz/Sipa USA via AP

The Pentagon canceled an armored brigade deployment to Poland and discussed pulling thousands of troops from Germany in recent months, only for Trump to later announce a new commitment of 5,000 troops for Poland without disclosing any details.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in mid-June a six-month review of U.S. force posture and military bases in Europe — part of the administration’s push to get allies to take more responsibility.

To boot, the Trump administration reportedly plans to reduce by roughly one-third the number of fighter jets it assigns to NATO, halve its strategic bomber commitment and withdraw an aircraft carrier, a cruise missile-capable submarine and other high-end assets from the pool of forces earmarked for the alliance in a crisis.

Ian Brzezinski, a former Pentagon official now at the Atlantic Council, said the administration seems to be reversing longstanding U.S. policy of keeping forces overseas to deter conflicts before they threaten American shores: “That’s probably the main driver behind this series of force reductions, the salami slices we’ve seen over the last year,” he said.

Talking Turkey

Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a longtime Trump ally, are set to meet, potentially opening the door to a U.S. sale of F-35 fighters after Washington greenlit the sale of F-110 aircraft engines last month.

Any move to bring Turkey back into the program would send shockwaves through Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are uneasy with Erdoğan and U.S. law requires sanctions over Ankara’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense system.

“That’s a matter of law,” Rep. Brian Mast (R-Florida), the House Foreign Affairs chair and a Trump ally, told NOTUS. “Turkey is problematic on a number of fronts. Their actions in Syria and other places are much bigger pieces of the conversation that need to be addressed.”