NATO leaders will arrive in Ankara seeking not only to showcase record defence spending but also to contain renewed tensions with United States President Donald Trump over Iran, burden sharing and the future of United States forces in Europe. The summit has shifted from a victory lap into a stress test of whether the alliance can manage its most powerful and most unpredictable member while sustaining support for Ukraine and deterring Russia.
Ankara as Diplomatic Stage
The Ankara meeting will bring Trump together with thirty one other allied leaders, hosted by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, a leader with whom Trump maintains relatively strong personal ties. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is expected to attend a summit dinner, underscoring that support for Ukraine’s defence against Russia remains a central, if politically sensitive, pillar of the agenda. European officials hope that Erdogan’s relationship with Trump, combined with the new NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s outreach, will help keep discussions on track, yet they acknowledge that lingering bitterness over the Iran war and past disputes could surface at any moment.
Pressure over Spending and Burden Sharing
For European governments, Ankara is an opportunity to demonstrate that they have responded to long standing American complaints about burden sharing. Rutte has noted that European NATO members and Canada spent about ninety billion dollars more on defence in 2025 than the year before, reaching a total of more than five hundred seventy billion dollars, and allies have agreed to raise core defence spending on items such as weapons and troops to three and a half percent of GDP by 2035, with an additional one and a half percent of GDP devoted to broader defence related investments like cybersecurity. These pledges are designed in part to answer Trump’s criticism that the United States “gets no benefit” from protecting allies, a claim he repeated recently on his social media platform, even as European leaders insist that the alliance enhances United States security and that they are finally doing what Washington has asked for decades.
United States Force Posture and Strategic Uncertainty
Ankara also unfolds against the backdrop of a Pentagon review of American troop deployments in Europe and signals from Washington that further reductions are on the table. Reports indicate that the White House has at least temporarily suspended announced cuts, but uncertainty about long term United States force posture feeds doubts inside European capitals about how reliable American security guarantees will be in practice. Trump’s repeated questioning of NATO’s collective defence commitment, particularly after European governments declined to fully support his campaign against Iran, has injected strategic ambiguity into the very clause that has underpinned European security since 1949.
Managing Trump: Personal Diplomacy as Alliance Insurance
In the weeks leading up to the summit, Rutte travelled to Washington with the explicit aim of easing tensions, combining praise for increased European spending with measured pushback on Trump’s harshest rhetoric. European leaders are increasingly treating this type of personal diplomacy as a form of political insurance: by reassuring Trump that his pressure has produced results, they hope to keep him invested in the alliance, or at least to avoid disruptive public confrontations in Ankara. Yet this strategy also underscores a structural vulnerability, since it ties alliance cohesion to the mood of one leader rather than to institutionalized commitments, leaving NATO exposed to sudden shifts in Washington’s domestic politics.
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Broader Strategic Implications for NATO
The Ankara summit will likely reaffirm continued military assistance to Ukraine and highlight new arms deals worth tens of billions of dollars, aiming to translate higher budgets into credible combat capabilities and expanded defence industrial capacity. At the same time, unresolved disagreements over Iran, concerns about the Iran war overshadowing the meeting, and debates over the distribution of United States and European responsibilities reveal that NATO is grappling with a dual challenge: maintaining deterrence vis a vis Russia while adapting to a more transactional approach from Washington. For Europe, the long term implication is clear: higher spending must eventually produce real strategic autonomy in conventional defence, rather than an endless cycle of pledges calibrated to the immediate preferences of a United States president.
A Final Note
If Ankara ends with a calm joint statement and fresh funding pledges, leaders may claim success, but such outcomes will only temporarily mask deeper questions about the durability of transatlantic security guarantees in an era of volatile American politics. The summit’s real significance lies in whether European states convert this period of intense spending and diplomacy into lasting capabilities that can sustain NATO, regardless of who occupies the White House.
