Early in President Donald Trump’s second term, European leaders and many U.S. defense and security experts were anticipating this week’s NATO summit with foreboding.
Would Mr. Trump, who had expressed hostility and disdain for the transatlantic alliance in his first term – even musing about pulling the United States out – make good on his threats? Might 2025 be the year that the American security blanket wrapped around Europe since World War II unraveled?
But as NATO leaders gather at The Hague for a two-day summit beginning Tuesday, the deep worries have been replaced by an “oof” of relief – or at least a “So far, so good.”
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Despite some tensions over Iran, and disagreements over Ukraine, European members of NATO think they can deliver enough of what President Donald Trump wants to keep him committed to the alliance and to European security.
No one thinks sunshine has replaced all the clouds hanging over the transatlantic partnership. And now Mr. Trump’s decision to attack Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend will add some tension to the proceedings, as the action runs counter to European preferences for a diplomatic solution over Iran’s nuclear program.
But there is a sense that the summit will appease Mr. Trump enough to keep the U.S. at the helm of European defense, for now.
“This summit is organized around minimizing the risks of an existential crisis over the question of the U.S. commitment to Europe,” says Robert Hunter, U.S. ambassador to NATO in the immediate post-Cold War period. “They’ll give Trump things he can take home and say, ‘I barked and look what I got!’” he adds. “But the ghost at the banquet is still going to be whether the president of the United States is truly committed to NATO.”
Multilateralism and Iran strikes
Europeans’ questions about just how committed President Trump is to the kind of multilateralism the alliance embodies will likely be intensified by the airstrikes on Iran.
Mr. Trump’s suggestion last week that he would hold off on any decision for two weeks, in part to give diplomacy a chance to work, was reassuring to Europeans, says Seth Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
In a similar way, so now should be the president’s argument that he acted to avoid a larger war. A number of European officials said they were assured by administration contacts that the airstrikes aimed to make serious diplomacy possible.
“If you look at the statements of a number of European leaders, they do not want an Iranian bomb,” Dr. Jones says. “So I think the president … giving diplomacy a chance and [being] concerned about getting the U.S. involved in a war in the Middle East … actually helps.”
The gathering is set to confirm action and steps forward on two issues at the heart of Mr. Trump’s criticism of NATO: low defense spending by many member countries, and the need for a wealthy Europe to do more for its own defense.
The summit will confirm new defense spending targets that go well beyond the famous “2% of GDP” agreed to in 2014. Mr. Trump in his first term angrily noted that was a commitment not being kept by many members.
By the end of last year, nearly two dozen of NATO’s 32 member states had hit the 2% goal, while NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte announced this month that “most, if not all” members would reach or surpass the goal this year.
Now at the urging of the Trump administration, leaders are expected to set a new target of 5% of gross domestic product spending on defense by 2032 – a relatively short time frame for NATO. The new target would be divided between a 3.5% goal for core defense spending, and 1.5% for improvements to civilian infrastructure like roads and communications systems the military could use in emergencies.
Some analysts describe the two-part 5% goal as “fuzzy math” concocted to appease President Trump – while others note that the U.S. does not currently meet the 3.5% of GDP goal, as U.S. defense spending as a percentage of GDP has been falling.
Moreover, the summit will underscore an emerging division of labor – one the Trump administration has pressed for – under which Europe takes on greater responsibility for its own defense, while the U.S. turns its attention increasingly to the Asia-Pacific.
Range of Trump administration views
No one is predicting that the meetings at The Hague, with the traditional leaders’ “family photo” and an opening dinner for leaders hosted by King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, will now be a transatlantic love fest. European doubts about America’s long-term commitment to the alliance run deep, while the messaging from an administration divided over Europe’s salience to U.S. national security has hardly been reassuring.
“The big question that … casts a big shadow around the summit [is] how committed to the alliance is the United States,” says Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There is … not a coherent view coming from the Trump administration about how it sees NATO. So right now, Europeans can see what they want from the United States.”
Europeans can choose, he says, from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s emphasis to his NATO colleagues earlier this year on burden-sharing – with Europe looking out more for its own defense – or from Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying essentially that the U.S. remains committed to the alliance as long as Europeans step up and spend more.
Finally, Mr. Bergmann says, there is the perspective of Vice President JD Vance that shocked Europeans in February when he questioned in a Munich speech whether the U.S. and Europe still share the same values.
He refers to a Vance “camp … where there’s a real hostility towards the NATO alliance.”
Still, most expect a summit designed to placate Mr. Trump and showcase unity will come off smoothly, although there are still potential hitches.
One is Ukraine.
President Trump ghosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a recent G7 summit in Canada, and the two leaders are not expected to meet formally at The Hague. There will be no leaders-level meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council, which will take place instead among foreign ministers.
It’s a rude comedown for Mr. Zelenskyy, who was a star of last year’s NATO summit in Washington, where President Joe Biden hailed Ukraine as a bulwark of European security.
The Washington summit’s declaration highlighted NATO support for Ukraine. This year, Ukraine will not even rate a mention, diplomats say.
“There’s not going to be much said on Ukraine,” says Kurt Volker, a former NATO ambassador who served as special representative for Ukraine in the first Trump term. “The real issue is that the U.S. does not see Ukrainian security as essential to European security, and our European allies do,” he says.
Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press/AP
The Europeans see Russian President Vladimir Putin prevailing in Ukraine as “a big security threat for Europe and NATO,” he adds, while “The U.S. simply doesn’t see it that way.”
Is Trump committed?
Some worry that an unpredictable U.S. president could still upend the summit: by departing early, as he did from the G7 gathering, or by saying something that shatters the sense of unity (which is one reason NATO planners have not scheduled the traditional joint U.S. president-NATO secretary-general press conference).
The prevailing feeling is that Mr. Trump could hardly walk away from or spoil a party that will present him with the very gifts he has asked for.
But others say that while all the careful choreography may preclude a disaster, it will also leave unanswered the key question that NATO leaders will have top of mind.
“What the Europeans want to know is if the United States, if President Trump is fully committed to our NATO allies,” says Ambassador Hunter. “They want to know, If Russia does something that is recognizable as an aggression against a NATO ally, will Trump come to that ally’s defense?”
But no one will ask the question, he says, “because they know there’s a real risk they won’t get the right answer.”
