NATO unity fractures over defence spending and strategic priorities

The NATO summit in Ankara this week carries all the usual choreography: communiqués already drafted, commitments pre-negotiated, arms deals ready for announcement. But beneath the stagecraft, something genuinely structural is under strain. The transatlantic relationship that has underwritten European security for eight decades is being renegotiated in real time, with no clear blueprint for what replaces it if the negotiation fails.

The Iran fallout has given old grievances a new edge

The proximate tension at Ankara is the fallout from the US-Israel campaign against Iran. Several European leaders, Spain's Pedro Sánchez most visibly among them, condemned the strikes as a breach of international law. Others tried to stay out of it. Trump, who has never been subtle about keeping score, arrives in Ankara having publicly complained that European allies were "not there" for the US. It is the first time he has been face to face with many of these leaders since the Iran campaign began, and the diplomats who spent months trying to keep things smooth are now hoping that restraint holds in the room.

That grievance sits on top of a longer-running argument about money. At The Hague last year, NATO allies agreed to lift defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035, up from the 2 per cent target that most members spent over a decade failing to meet. The new number is more than double the old one, and most European members are nowhere near it. Poland and Lithuania are the exceptions. Everyone else is, at best, trending in the right direction.

Thirty years of cuts cannot be reversed by a budget announcement

The peace dividend problem is real and deep. After the Cold War, European NATO members cut defence spending by roughly 22 per cent across the 1990s. They did it deliberately, rationally, as a choice about what a post-Soviet world required. The consequence is that when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the industrial capacity, trained forces, and stockpile depth that Europe would need to respond effectively had been hollowing out for thirty years. That is not a problem a budget announcement fixes. It takes years to build a munitions production line, train an armoured brigade, or develop the logistics chain that modern warfighting depends on.

European governments face a stark incentive calculation: spend hundreds of billions now to satisfy a leader who may not be there to see the results, building capabilities that a future US administration might interpret as grounds for pulling American troops back rather than keeping them forward.

European governments face a three-year incentive trap

This is where the editor's question bites hardest. Trump has three years left in office. A genuine defence build-up, of the kind the 5 per cent target implies, takes a decade to bed in and would outlast his administration by years. European governments face a stark incentive calculation: spend hundreds of billions now to satisfy a leader who may not be there to see the results, building capabilities that a future US administration might interpret as grounds for pulling American troops back rather than keeping them forward. Germany's reported plan to borrow 800 billion euros by 2030 is a serious commitment, but it is also a bet that the alliance will remain coherent enough to make that spending worthwhile.

Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the former US Army commander in Europe, put the allied dilemma plainly: European leaders should not be "grovelling" in their interactions with the US president, and if Trump were to storm out or be disruptive, "everyone else still needs to stick together." His framing is right as far as it goes. NATO's value does not depend entirely on American participation in any given summit. But the structural question he gestures at is harder: European defence capacity was built on the assumption of American commitment. Unwinding that dependency requires a scale of investment and political will that democratic governments, facing cost-of-living pressures and electoral cycles measured in three-year intervals, struggle to sustain.

Rutte's burden-sharing framing is right, but does not resolve the timing problem

NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte insists the alliance is adapting, moving from dependency toward "real burden-sharing and self-reliance." That framing is almost certainly correct as a long-term description of where NATO is heading. The problem is that framing does not resolve the timing mismatch between political cycles and defence investment horizons, and it does not address the "bad blood" that analyst Maria Martisiute describes as the real legacy of the Iran dispute.

What the Ankara summit will likely produce is a reaffirmed Article 5 commitment, some arms deals, and a communiqué that papers over the fault lines without closing them. Whether that is enough depends on a question the summit cannot answer: whether the US-Europe relationship has been strained to the point where European capitals need to treat American security guarantees as contingent rather than absolute. If European governments have reached that conclusion privately, the spending arguments stop being about satisfying Trump and start being about something more durable. If they have not, the incentives to keep delaying are still there, and the clock is running.

Sources

ABC News — 'Bad blood' between US and European allies as NATO summit begins

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are European countries struggling to meet NATO's 5 per cent spending target?
European NATO members spent the 1990s deliberately cutting defence budgets by roughly 22 per cent after the Cold War ended, hollowing out industrial capacity, trained forces, and stockpiles over three decades. Reversing that requires years to build munitions lines, train brigades, and develop logistics — problems that cannot be solved by a budget announcement alone.

What does Trump's timeline in office have to do with European defence spending?
A genuine defence build-up of the kind NATO's 5 per cent target requires takes a decade to bed in, meaning it would outlast Trump's current term by years. European governments face a real incentive to delay: spending hundreds of billions now satisfies a leader who may not be there to see the results, while a future US administration might use European self-sufficiency as justification for withdrawing forward-deployed troops.

What caused the 'bad blood' going into the Ankara NATO summit?
Several European leaders, including Spain's Pedro Sánchez, publicly condemned the US-Israel strikes against Iran as a breach of international law. Trump arrived at Ankara having complained that European allies were 'not there' for the US, making Ankara the first face-to-face meeting with many of those leaders since the Iran campaign.

Which NATO countries are actually meeting their defence spending commitments?
Poland and Lithuania stand out as the exceptions, with most other European members still well short of the 5 per cent of GDP target agreed at The Hague and trending only gradually in the right direction. Both countries border or are close to Russia, which likely explains the domestic political will to sustain high spending.

What is Article 5 of NATO and why does it matter at this summit?
Article 5 is the alliance's collective defence guarantee — an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all. The Ankara summit is expected to reaffirm that commitment in its final communiqué, but reaffirmation is largely symbolic if European capitals have privately begun treating American security guarantees as contingent rather than absolute.