The NATO Summit in Ankara: moving towards the Alliance 3.0

Making a rare appearance at NATO headquarters recently for a meeting of the Alliance’s Defence Ministers, the US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, proclaimed the birth of a “NATO 3.0”. As he did not explain what NATO 1.0 or 2.0 consisted of previously, it was difficult to grasp exactly what this new NATO model will look like. But from all his criticisms of the contributions of the European allies to the common defence and their over-reliance on American forces and capabilities, it seems a safe bet that the future NATO will mean Europe doing a lot more and the United States a lot less. The Alliance will be managed and resourced essentially by Europeans. Already under pressure to spend more on defence and modernise their armed forces to face an increasing threat from Russia, the allies must now find even more capabilities to replace the troops and platforms that the Pentagon intends to pull out of its NATO tasks in Europe. Hegseth announced in Brussels a six-month review by the Pentagon of each individual ally to judge how much that ally contributes to NATO missions and is of use and value to the United States. The unprecedented review was prompted by frustration in the Trump administration at the perceived lack of NATO support for Trump’s strikes against Iran, particularly the denial of the use of airbases in the UK and Italy by US Air Force bombers, fighter jets and refuelling tankers. The President’s conclusion was that ungrateful allies did far less to help the US than the US did for them (overlooking European deployments over 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq).

Yet in advance of the outcome of the Pentagon review (and any US punitive actions against perceived European laggards that it might engender), the US has already announced a number of withdrawals of troops and equipment from the NATO Force Model, a catalogue of military units and capabilities that each ally will commit to the defence of NATO territory in the event of crisis or war. No details have been provided officially but the Reuters news agency has reported that of 2 US aircraft carriers previously assigned to NATO, one will be withdrawn; of 2 strategic bombers, only one will remain, the number of F15 and F15E fighter jets will reduce by a third to 99, MQ9 and MQ4 Reaper drones by half to 12, KC135 and KC 46 refuelling aircraft from 79 to 63, maritime patrol aircraft from 26 to 15 and destroyers from 17 to 9. A cruise missile submarine (the only one committed) will also be withdrawn. These are significant reductions in key platform capabilities, but as they were purely indicative US contributions to the NATO Force Model to facilitate operational planning, there was never a guarantee that they would actually be available when push came to shove. Everything would depend on the where and when of a conflict and if the US was involved in other military operations elsewhere. More significant is the withdrawal of US forces usually stationed in Europe on a permanent basis, as NATO is their single commitment. Thus, Trump’s stated intention to withdraw 5000 troops from Germany has raised concerns not just in Berlin but in other European capitals too, although Poland has offered to relocate these troops on its territory. The Pentagon has also cancelled the deployment this year of a long-range fires company to Germany. Yet despite these changes, important US capabilities will still remain in Europe for NATO’s collective defence, and at the most recent NATO Defence Ministers’ meeting, the Nuclear Planning Group agreed to move ahead with the modernisation of the Alliance’s sub-strategic (tactical) nuclear weapons based in Europe. The US supplies the weapons and 5 European allies the fighter jets and basing infrastructure to operate them in a wartime situation. The Pentagon has similarly approved upgrading work at three of the airbases that it operates in the United Kingdom, possibly with a view to once more operating nuclear-capable aircraft there.

Thus even if the Trump administration is pushing for the European allies to be able to take care of their own conventional defence by 2030, it would be wrong to conclude that the US has fully disengaged from NATO and will simply abandon its allies if they ever face aggression from Russia, or any other party. The presumption that they will fight is still today arguably (and despite all that has happened in Trump’s two terms) as strong as that they will not. The senior US generals and admirals in the NATO integrated command structure, from the SACEUR, Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, downwards, are all adamant that they and the forces under their command are totally focused on defending every inch of Alliance territory. Both the NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, and General Grynkewich have announced that the European allies have already made up for the disappearing US capabilities with the exception of the strategic bombers; and where Europe does not possess equivalent systems and weapons, Allied Command Operations (the former SHAPE) is looking for workarounds. So, as it approaches its next summit in Ankara on 7-8 July, NATO is still in business as a viable security organisation, at least in the near term. Indeed, with the European allies and Canada having increased their defence spending by US $250bn over the past two years, never has so much money been ploughed into making it stronger and more capable. The irony is that Washington’s policies are making the Alliance both stronger and weaker simultaneously. It is far from clear whether the Trump administration wants a stronger Europe as a security partner or as a pretext for disengaging from Europe altogether.

What NATO 3.0 means for Europe

First, the political context. NATO 3.0 clearly implies that NATO 2.0, the previous model, is now obsolete and the United States is quite content to bury it. That leaves Europe divided between those nostalgics who would like to hold on to as much of the old model as possible, and the reformers who see the Trump years as the opportunity to build the European Defence Union, which, in their view, can alone reduce their dependence on their fickle transatlantic partner and safeguard the security and sovereignty of Europe for the long-term. Even if America is still implanted militarily in Europe, certain strategic shifts have happened, are irreversible and require a different kind of alliance in the future. One in which Europe cannot structure its military defence around America’s willingness and capability to provide deterrence vis-à-vis Russia as well as all its core military enablers and frontline fighting units. Instead, US assets need to become welcome and useful additions to European forces, which will certainly help NATO if they show up on the battlefield in good time (like the arrival of the 6th Cavalry in American war movies), but which in the final analysis can be replaced and lived without, and which no longer make the difference between victory or defeat. Another reason behind the paradigm shift is that the US can abandon Europe politically and strategically even if Washington still (and more narrowly) upholds its treaty obligation under Article 5 to help NATO repel armed aggression. If the US were invested in European security for the long-term it would manifestly have given far more support to Ukraine as the best way to weaken the Russian military machine, protect NATO’s vulnerable eastern flank by progressively incorporating Ukraine and its army and innovative defence industries into NATO’s planning, exercising and capability development programmes, and denying Russia the ability to exploit a grey zone of instability and competition to the Alliance’s east and south. But Trump’s misreading of the Ukraine war – and what it means for NATO security, and his corresponding unwillingness to supply Kyiv with adequate weapons or to put maximum pressure on Russia through sanctions – has undermined European confidence that the US has any idea or concept of what the future European security architecture should look like. In contrast to previous US administrations, neither the President nor his senior foreign policy officials have said anything on the topic. When it comes to Ukraine the President rarely acknowledges Russia as the aggressor but sees the conflict as an unnecessary waste of human life caused by two equally delinquent sides, which should end as quickly as possible, irrespective of the durability or the justice of a peace settlement.

Shedding burdens and handing over responsibility to Europe has been the administration’s primary agenda and message, except that if Europe is spending a lot more on armaments, US defence companies should get their share of the spoils. To some extent, they already do. The NATO Secretary General has pointed out that European defence procurement sustains 190,000 jobs in the US industry. Thus, and in contrast to the years of detente, arms control, East-West dialogue, confidence-building measures, and the NATO-Russia Council, Europeans need to define a future security architecture without the US being a “European power” (to use the term of Richard Holbrooke) or playing a balancing and stabilising role on the continent. Beyond an emphasis on power for its own sake, and military superiority over others, Washington has been absent from the discussion on the shape of political orders that power can help to achieve. Europe has to fill the gap by itself.

Europe’s hybrid security challenge

Finally, a third element is the permanent European crisis generated by Russia’s hybrid warfare activity below the threshold of a full-scale military aggression under Article 5 of the NATO treaty. What if Putin seizes the border city of Narva in Estonia, claiming that Russia is coming to the rescue of oppressed Russian speakers who are being mistreated by NATO and local forces? In the event of a limited (and possibly ambiguous) incursion like this, with heavy propaganda, unclear long-term Russian intentions and a murky situation on the ground with both Russian troops and proxy “patriot” militias mixed together, would the US respond immediately and decisively or hold back and leave it to Europe? When it comes to these hybrid operations, such as cyber attacks, espionage and sabotage, assassinations, mapping of vulnerable underwater infrastructure and cables or drone incursions and disruptions, we have seen an inconsistent response from Washington. Trump, in his first term, went along with the expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats from the US following a decision in NATO after Russian GRU operatives carried out an attack using the Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, United Kingdom in 2018. In doing so, he followed the lead of the UK and its European partners.

Yet since that time, Europe has had to handle Russia’s hybrid warfare largely by itself. With the exception of some limited boardings of oil tankers associated with Moscow’s shadow fleet and a US-led effort to form an international coalition to source rare earths and raw materials from non-Chinese suppliers, there has been little coordination between Brussels and Washington in response to Moscow’s or China’s hybrid activities. Disputes between Brussels and Washington over the regulation of US social media companies and the extent of freedom of speech have hindered European efforts to combat disinformation and propaganda. At times it has seemed as if the Trump administration is conducting its own hybrid campaign against Europe by warning of “civilisational erasure” and linking immigration to crime, and multicultural and multiethnic societies to a decline in Christian religious belief and western values. It has actively promoted far-right political movements in Europe which seek to undermine the European Union and reverse the project of European integration in the name of nationalism and national sovereignty above all else. Washington has been reluctant to cooperate on AI development with Europe, wanting to reserve many of the military and economic benefits for itself. It denies the reality of climate change, trying to block international efforts to deal with this growing threat to health and infrastructure while its military operations, as in the recent war against Iran, inflict serious collateral damage on Europe’s energy supplies and already anaemic economic growth. As the terrorist threat has abated, the close cooperation between US and European intelligence services and domestic security agencies has slackened.

When it comes to building resilience against the multiple manifestations of hybrid warfare, Europe is on its own and has to rely on its own resources to protect its infrastructure, supply chains, business and information systems and information space. There can be no true European Strategic Autonomy if Europe is unable to assert its technological sovereignty in key areas, like space, AI, cyber, robotics, autonomous vehicles and advanced materials, essential for modern defence. In sum, the rebalancing of NATO towards its European pillar (which will be the principal theme of the Ankara Summit) is long overdue. But it cannot be a substitute for a future European Defence Union in which the major European states create a single operational space to use their resources and capabilities more effectively against military, economic and political threats. The Europeanisation of NATO by itself cannot provide an independent European deterrence capability vis-à-vis Russia (or China and other potential hostile powers); it cannot provide for a greater European diplomatic role in shaping the continent’s future security architecture after the war in Ukraine, and it cannot provide for a more forthright and coordinated European response against the full spectrum (military and economic) of hybrid threats. The necessity of a European Defence Union will not be discussed at the Summit but like Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s feast, it will hang as a heavy shadow over all the proceedings.

A Summit shaped by new realities

There tend to be two types of NATO summit. The first are damage limitation exercises, like last year’s summit in The Hague, which was cut short in order to minimise the possibility of Trump disrupting the meeting or becoming bored with too many discussions in different formats (for instance, separate meetings with Ukraine or other NATO partner countries). There was just one dominant theme: more European defence spending and an agreement on a new Defence Investment Pledge to take the military budgets of allies up to 5 % of national GDP by 2035 (3.5 % being devoted to spending on armed forces and 1.5% on infrastructure projects that could help defence, such as bridges, railways and energy storage). Spain was the only dissenting voice. Yet summits pared down to a dinner and a single session the following morning, as was the case in The Hague and will be repeated in Ankara, are designed to get through the diplomatic agony as quickly and painlessly as possible, in order to placate an unpredictable US President and to try to make him view the Alliance in a more positive light. As such, they do not seem to justify the enormous cost and effort that go into organising them. Faced with a choice between the glass being half full or half empty, Trump inevitable chooses the latter. A few days before departing for Ankara, he was complaining again that the US spends far more on NATO than the Europeans (although the methodology he used to come to this assessment was not explained). Criticising NATO again for not giving Washington sufficient support in its war against Iran (although he did not consult the Alliance beforehand or request a specific NATO operation in the Persian Gulf), he added that he was only going to the summit out of courtesy to his friend and fellow strongman, President Erdoğan. This is why NATO ambassadors have begun to question whether it is wise to hold annual NATO summits, and perhaps better to return to an earlier arrangement when they were organised at intervals of several years and only when significant political decisions needed to be taken, for instance on NATO enlargement.

All this is a far cry from NATO summits in recent decades that went on for 2 full days and reshaped the security map of Europe. NATO historians will recall in this respect the London Summit in 1990 that buried the hatchet of the Cold War and invited Soviet President Gorbachev to visit NATO headquarters. Or the Brussels Summit of 1994 that launched the Alliance’s Partnership for Peace, a programme of security cooperation with former adversaries in Central and Eastern Europe and which paved the way for future NATO enlargement. Or the Prague Summit in 2002 which ushered in the Alliance’s largest single wave of new member countries. Or the Lisbon Summit of 2010 which adapted NATO to a range of emerging security challenges on the home front and approved a new Alliance Strategic Concept. These were occasions when NATO looked outwards rather than seeing the purpose of these meetings to check that the Alliance still existed de facto or to patch up relations among allies. They produced long communiques which, although tortuously negotiated and drafted, nonetheless allowed NATO to comment on a wide range of issues, from non-proliferation and regional conflicts to energy security, cyber defence and climate change.

Although Pete Hegseth often dismisses the old Alliance as a debating club governed by committees, in sharp contrast to the war-fighting machine he would like to turn it into today, political consultations among allies helped to push non-military approaches to security, for instance defence institution building, democratic control of armed forces, anti-corruption and integrity programmes, and science and technology cooperation with partner countries. In its 2010 Strategic Concept NATO made cooperative security into its third core task, alongside collective defence and crisis management. This was a recognition that building security relationships with others lessened the chance that future threats would emerge and widened the circle of potential contributors to NATO’s missions, for instance in the Western Balkans and Afghanistan. Military power is important for security but it alone cannot guarantee lasting peace and stability, especially if it leads to destabilising arms races. Only a comprehensive approach using political and diplomatic tools to complement military capabilities can achieve this goal. If NATO summits talk only of ever more defence spending and armaments production, and abandon this comprehensive approach, the Alliance may find it harder to sustain public and political support, particularly on the centre left.

From political commitments to military capability

Yet the Ankara Summit can still be a good news story for NATO if we turn away from Trump’s theatrics for a moment and look at the reality of what is happening within the Alliance.

First, defence spending and burden sharing. Visiting Washington ahead of the summit last week, NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, showed Trump spending graphs that amounted to a “Trump Trillion”, the overall amount of extra money that Canada and the European allies will spend on defence by the time Trump leaves office and vis-à-vis the situation when he first arrived in the White House in 2017. Rutte added that the non-US allies have spent an extra US $250bn in the last two years alone. Although the NATO Secretary General likes to give Trump, and his pressure on Europe to spend more, the credit for these massive increases, in reality some allies like Poland and the Baltic states were up to 4% of GDP already before the new spending target of 5% was announced in The Hague due to perceptions of an increased threat from Russia. This said, most allies have come up with plans to reach the new target by 2035 although Spain, the Czech Republic and Slovenia are staying around the level of 2%, the former NATO target, believing that this is sufficient to allow them to meet their force and capability goals within the Alliance’s regional defence plans. Italy too has stressed that outputs are more relevant than inputs and that NATO should assess the two more equitably. Europe shows a persistent gap as spending on defence and on military support packages for Ukraine is far higher in northern Europe than in southern Europe where threat perceptions of Russia are distinctly lower. The message of putting countries on a heightened war footing and calls for social mobilisation to build resilience against hybrid threats are harder to sell to public opinions that feel geographically remote from the threat and have long been accustomed to seeing Russia as a commercial and energy partner.

The case of the United Kingdom, which has fallen to second from bottom in the NATO spending table (as a percentage of GDP) is particularly edifying. Just before the summit, Prime Minister Keir Starmer published at long last the government’s Defence Investment Plan to show how the UK intends to prioritise and fund the capability improvements called for in the government’s Strategic Defence Review carried out by former NATO Secretary General, George Robertson. The delay in over a year in producing the investment plan had worried the UK armed forces that existing equipment, like ships and aircraft, would reach the end of their service life well before the replacement capabilities (which can take a decade or more to manufacture) would become available. Much of the money would be used to plug a £28bn funding gap in existing defence contracts rather than start new procurements. Ultimately, the government announced that it could move only to 2.7% of GDP in the lifetime of the next parliament (from 2.4% currently), putting in doubt its ability to get to 3.5% by the NATO target date of 2035. At this rate many of the new capabilities would not be delivered until the 2040 timeframe, a sobering thought when many senior military commanders have been warning of the prospect of a confrontation with Russia within the next 5 years. Initially, the government announced an increase of £13bn in the Defence Investment Plan, which led to the resignation of John Healey, the defence minister. This sum was subsequently increased to £15bn but £4.7bn is still unfunded and will have to be found by the UK Treasury. In order to fund the defence increase, the government imposed a 1% spending reduction on other government departments and cancelled some energy projects and a major road bypass construction. A third of the increase has also come from reshuffling spending within the MOD itself and finding various efficiencies. With the UK now experiencing the highest debt servicing costs within the G7, taking on new debt through bonds or the idea of a Defence Investment and Resilience Bank (as proposed by Canadian Premier Mark Carney) was unpalatable to a Labour government also confronting rapidly rising pension and social welfare costs. Yet the Defence Investment Plan has not quietened the critics. The former British Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Admiral Sir Keith Blount, has warned that a militarily weakened UK will have to surrender many of its prominent military and civilian positions in the NATO organisation. The Conservative opposition supports major cuts in the welfare budget (currently double the size of the defence budget) as the only way to bring the UK armed forces up to the required level to defend the country. This would mean the end of inflation-proofed pensions and reduced benefits for working-age men and women.

Meanwhile, the government hopes that defence investments will generate jobs as industry expands to meet orders. But given the long lead times it will be some years before we can measure whether this actually happens. Governments will be under pressure to award contracts to their national defence industries. Germany for instance has moved from 30% in 2021 to 60% of its contracts going to domestic suppliers this year. National preference may well be a political imperative but it may not be economically efficient in stifling foreign competition and will make it more difficult to create an EU single market in defence goods and services. At all events the UK experience shows how going forward it will be difficult for allied governments to square the magic circle of increased defence spending, welfare for ageing populations and debt servicing on higher deficits in low-growth European economies. For the UK to reach 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035 would require an additional £25bn a year. This is serious money. Germany for instance has just announced that it will need to borrow €203bn to fund its latest budget proposal. This is where EU common loan schemes like Security Action for Europe (SAFE), which has made €150bn available, can help member states to shoulder the defence burden while opening up protected European defence markets. In Ankara NATO should acknowledge the key contribution that the EU is making to resolving its spending dilemmas.

The Ankara Summit will also focus on defence industry and procurement. Mark Rutte is right in pointing out that you cannot fight with euro or dollar bills but only with capabilities. So, moving from budgets to delivery and giving industry clear demand signals is essential. The summit will have a parallel defence industry forum where company executives can discuss contracting and production issues with NATO leaders and government officials. The host, Türkiye, will undoubtedly use the forum to showcase its own high-tech defence companies, its expertise in drone development through the Baykar company and its new Kaan fighter jet programme. The message to Europe will be to be more open to collaboration with Turkish industry. Meanwhile, Erdoğan has been boosted by the agreement of the US administration to supply Ankara with advanced jet engines and potentially reopen the F35 programme to Turkish participation – although there may be opposition in Congress after Türkiye’s purchase of Russian S400 air defence systems. Rutte has said that many new procurement agreements and industry partnerships will be announced at the summit to demonstrate that there is now momentum behind European rearmament. NATO is setting up an AI-enabled procurement platform as a single point of entry for industry to access NATO contracts. Many of the announcements will no doubt cover existing programmes in a repackaged format as many major programmes have already been launched. For instance, last week Poland contracted to buy 5 submarines from the Swedish firm, Saab. Germany announced a defence cooperation agreement with the Baltic states and the European Commission proposed 5 new cross-border security projects. The UK, Japan and Italy awarded a £4.6bn contract to the joint venture Edgewing to build the new Global Combat Air Programme fighter jet. After months of delay, the UK has now committed £8.6bn over the next four years to this programme and there is hope that other countries like Spain or Germany may join it now that Paris and Berlin have cancelled their own 6th generation fighter FCAS project. Ankara will be a useful moment for NATO allies to do a stocktake on where they are with defence production and identify what is working and what is not. Companies have complained about the slowness of contracting and governments disbursing funds. It has taken more than a year, for instance, for Poland and the Baltic states to access the first SAFE loans. There are also complaints about short-termism and small contracts for limited amounts of equipment or ammunition that do not incentivise industry to expand capacity, hire more workers or buy more machine tools and raw materials. Of the 200 or so defence companies in the EU, some have been able to ramp up production quickly, but others have not, which has led to disruptions in supply chains when vital components are manufactured by just one or two companies. Leveraging commercial manufacturers is also a possible way forward as in the conversion of Volkswagen and Renault car plants to produce drones. But the biggest bottleneck issue has been that governments have hesitated about what they actually want to procure and what kind of armed forces they will need to face which precise threats in the 2035-2040 timeframe.

Again, the UK offers a telling example. The Defence Investment Plan was much criticised at first for emphasising too much large weapons platforms like crewed ships, tanks and manned aircraft, whereas the experience of Ukraine stressed the importance of drones, robotics and autonomous systems, AI for targeting, secure communications, and small hidden units rather than large military formations vulnerable to attack. Just before it was published, the UK government changed the plan to include $5bn for drones and £500mn for a new biological weapons research unit at Porton Down as well as investing more in the Commando Force and special operations units. A new destroyer programme, the Type 83, was cancelled to make way for 6 uncrewed Common Combat vessels as part of a future hybrid navy. Germany has gone through a similar belated transformation. Last month, it cancelled its F126 large destroyer programme, putting the contractor, Rheinmetall, in difficulty and writing off billions but judging too that a navy based more on drone ships and cheaper frigates suited its future operational requirements better. Yet these delays in fully integrating the Ukraine experience and defining a new force model for NATO armies have left industry uncertain about the future direction of travel, and thus unwilling to take a bet on the shape and size of upcoming contracts. Better to wait and see. But valuable time in preparing Europe to face the threat has been lost in the meantime. So, if the Ankara summit is to be beneficial it should not only announce lots of new investments and multinational tie-ups but also provide a common approach between governments and industry as to how to inject more coherence and a greater sense of urgency into European rearmament. In this connection defence markets need capital markets to scale up at the same pace, which brings us back to the issue of finance and innovative funding models.

Ukraine and NATO’s long-term security

Finally, Ukraine. President Zelensky will be in Ankara, hoping for additional military assistance from the NATO allies. The G7 meeting recently in Evian went well for Ukraine with the US President taking a more supportive line and praising Kyiv’s successes on the battlefield, especially its attacks on Russian oil facilities. Trump no longer declared that Moscow holds all the cards and the G7 was able to agree on a joint communique in contrast to the year before in Canada. The US has been negotiating cooperation agreements on drone development with Ukrainian companies and Trump showed interest in resuming efforts on peace negotiations, albeit knowing this time round that it is Putin who is showing no interest in concessions or compromise. Zelensky will be hoping for more in Ankara although it is difficult to see what new might be on the table. A proposal from Estonia that allies commit to providing 0.25% of their GDP to funding Ukraine is a non-starter. Negotiations ahead of the summit have shown a reluctance by some allies to go beyond the US$70bn committed to Ukraine in 2026 and commit to a further US$70bn for 2027 too. The EU has already begun to release the first tranche of the €90bn low-interest loan which it agreed to provide to Ukraine at the end of last year (with US $60bn of this sum being usable for arms purchases). Kyiv has been seeking via the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (currently chaired by the UK and Germany) a further US $20bn in military assistance for this year. There have been some financial packages pledged in recent weeks by allies (for instance US $600mn from Denmark and £200mn from the UK) but more multiyear packages running into the billions will be difficult to agree as allied budgets come under pressure and weapons stockpiles run down. Yet Ukraine has said it needs €136bn in defence funding this year, of which it can provide only €53bn from its own resources. Although Trump’s relationship with Zelensky has thankfully improved, he is unlikely to resume US financial grants or free weapons transfers to Ukraine and to continue to insist on paid transfers through the NATO-managed PURL mechanism based in Wiesbaden. The other problem is that after the war against Iran (perhaps still not finished), the US is prioritising its own armed forces, Israel and the Gulf countries when it comes to replenishing stockpiles of air defence missiles, pushing Kyiv down the queue. Accordingly, the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has had the novel idea that the US grant Germany a license to produce Patriot air defence batteries in Europe, both for Ukraine and NATO’s own eastern flank protection, particularly in light of recent incursions of Russian drones into border areas in Romania, Poland and the Baltic states.

If the US agreed, this scheme would take time to implement and would not solve Kyiv’s air defence problems in the face of Putin’s intensified drone and missile strikes in the short term. But nonetheless it would be a significant shot in the arm for Ukraine and an important signal to Moscow of which side of the fence the US is now on. But will Trump take this step in Ankara? There are hopes too that with the oil price falling, the US will reimpose oil sanctions on Russia and align with the 30th sanctions package being elaborated by the EU, as well as join European efforts to crack down more forcefully on the operations of Russia’s shadow fleet. But Trump is notably fickle when it comes to Ukraine and progress at the G7 will not necessarily produce a further bounce for Zelensky in Ankara. Ukraine will remain the responsibility of Europe, already providing over 90% of military and financial assistance to Kyiv. Yet even if there is not a big new package of funding for Kyiv, the participation of Ukrainian companies in the Industry Forum will be a welcome opportunity for Kyiv to continue to show just how indispensable its technology, innovation capabilities and battlefield experience are to NATO and to make its case for full inclusion into Europe’s ongoing investment and multinational equipment programmes.

In conclusion, Ankara will probably not be the landmark NATO summit that the rhetoric surrounding the meeting will have us believe. But if the meeting at least helps the US and Europe to put aside their differences over the war against Iran and Trump acknowledges the significant role that the European allies did play, including the European offer to deploy a maritime task force in the Strait of Hormuz to carry out demining and uphold freedom of navigation, it will be worthwhile. The transatlantic dialogue resumed in Evian will have gained useful momentum. Also, the summit declaration should see all allies reaffirm their commitment to NATO’s Article 5 “ironclad” collective defence. After what Trump has repeatedly said about the US willingness to defend Europe, that would certainly be a most valuable deliverable, even if European governments will not be able to put all their trust into it. The summit could be a useful occasion to clarify the relationship between governments and defence industries to accelerate procurement, even if the rapid pace of defence innovation makes it difficult to know in advance what to procure and when to procure it (the challenge is to have things that are not immediately obsolete the day they enter military inventories). The summit could help Ukraine with strong diplomatic support and give it a useful showcase for its domestic companies and capabilities as well as bringing Türkiye closer both to the US and to Europe. Not too bad for a day’s work if Trump can be convinced to see the glass as more than half full and look to the future instead of endlessly relitigating past grievances and disputes. Yet Ankara will perhaps have a deeper, if unstated, significance that will persuade future historians to dwell on it further: the moment when Europe has to take over the responsibility for the future direction of the NATO organisation and figure out what “Europeanising NATO” actually means in practice. These major strategic questions will not be answered in Ankara but they will be constantly asked offstage. It will be for the future revised EU Security Strategy, to be launched soon by either the Irish or Lithuanian Presidencies, to come up with the answers.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.