Trump Upends NATO’s Ankara Summit

Ankara Summit Opens Under a Cloud

NATO leaders arrived in Ankara this week hoping to showcase a more muscular, more self-reliant alliance. Instead, President Trump used the summit to reopen some of the most volatile arguments in the trans-Atlantic relationship, attacking Spain over defense spending, reviving his insistence that the United States should control Greenland and warning that he would not rule out further reductions of American troops in Europe.

The outbursts jolted a meeting that had been carefully planned as a demonstration of follow-through: proof that Europe and Canada were spending more, producing more weapons and taking on a larger share of the burden as Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on. By the second day, however, the summit had become as much a test of NATO’s political cohesion as of its military planning.

Trump said Spain was not contributing enough to the alliance and suggested that the United States should “cut off all trade” with the country, extending a pattern he has long used with allies he sees as free-riding on American power. He also returned to Greenland, arguing that the Arctic territory was strategically essential to the United States, and he declined to foreclose future troop withdrawals from Europe.

Each remark landed on a different NATO fault line. Together, they struck at the alliance’s most sensitive pillars: who pays, whose territory is inviolable and how dependable the American military commitment remains.

A Carefully Scripted Summit, Disrupted

NATO officials had intended the Ankara gathering to be a “delivery” summit, the next step after last year’s commitment in The Hague to move toward spending 5 percent of gross domestic product on defense and related security needs by 2035. Secretary General Mark Rutte has cast that effort as a new phase for the alliance — “NATO 3.0” — built around higher European and Canadian spending, faster defense production and sustained backing for Ukraine.

That message was still visible in Ankara. Leaders announced new procurement steps and sought to project steadiness. But the choreography was repeatedly interrupted by Trump’s running complaints that allies were not doing enough and by his suggestion that America’s protection could no longer be treated as automatic.

The timing was especially awkward for NATO. The alliance is trying to show that it has learned from years of criticism from Washington and that Europe is becoming more capable even as it remains dependent on U.S. intelligence, logistics, missile defense and long-range strike power. Any fresh doubt about Washington’s intentions risks blurring that message.

Spain Becomes the Immediate Target

Spain emerged as Trump’s principal public target because it has become a symbol of a broader argument inside NATO. Madrid has maintained that it can meet alliance capability requirements without fully embracing the spending trajectory Trump and some other leaders want. That position has made Spain an easy mark in the long-running American campaign for more visible burden-sharing.

Trump’s threat to hit Spain through trade underscored how he often links security grievances to economic punishment, even when the issues run through different institutions and legal frameworks. The comments also added to unease among European officials who have spent months trying to present defense spending plans as credible and politically sustainable, rather than simply responsive to White House pressure.

For other allies, the concern is not only whether Trump follows through, but whether NATO summits are becoming venues where internal disagreements are aired through threats rather than negotiated compromises.

Greenland and the Arctic Question

If the dispute with Spain was familiar, Trump’s renewed push on Greenland went further, raising a question not simply about burden-sharing but about the territorial integrity of a NATO member’s realm.

Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, has long held strategic value because of its position in the Arctic and North Atlantic, where shipping lanes, missile trajectories and military competition have become more important as polar ice recedes and Russian and Chinese activity draws greater scrutiny. The United States already has a military presence there at Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, a key site for missile warning and space surveillance.

But Trump’s insistence that the United States should control Greenland transformed a strategic concern into a direct political challenge to Denmark, one of Washington’s treaty allies. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen publicly rejected any transfer of the island and said Denmark was prepared to defend “every inch” of NATO territory, a phrase that deliberately echoed the language of collective defense.

Her response reflected how combustible the issue has become inside Europe. NATO’s foundational promise is that alliance borders are not bargaining chips to be rearranged by pressure from other powers, including, in this case, its leading member. For Denmark and others, any ambiguity on that point is especially dangerous at a time when Russia is still prosecuting a war built on territorial revisionism.

The Troop Question Hangs Over Europe

Trump’s refusal to rule out further troop withdrawals from Europe may have been the most consequential signal of all.

For decades, the U.S. military presence across the continent has served not only as a war-fighting asset but as a political guarantee that an attack on Europe would immediately engage American forces. That forward posture has been central to deterrence, especially on NATO’s eastern flank, where allies closest to Russia fear that mixed messages from Washington can invite miscalculation.

No immediate drawdown was announced in Ankara. But ambiguity itself has strategic effects. If allies, adversaries or even markets begin to believe that the United States may substantially reduce its role, questions arise quickly about readiness, command structures, reinforcement timelines and the credibility of Article 5, NATO’s collective defense clause.

That uncertainty comes at a difficult moment. Russia continues to pound Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, and NATO governments are trying to maintain political support for aid to Kyiv while also rebuilding their own depleted arsenals. The alliance’s effort to strengthen deterrence depends not just on new spending targets, but on confidence that the U.S. backstop remains in place while Europe rearms.

Leaders Try to Preserve Unity

Other leaders in Ankara worked to contain the damage, sticking closely to planned summit business and emphasizing areas of agreement. Rutte, in particular, sought to frame the meeting as a step toward a stronger alliance rather than a referendum on Trump’s grievances.

That balancing act has become a recurring feature of NATO diplomacy in the Trump era: absorb the shock, reaffirm the fundamentals and move the agenda forward where possible. Yet the approach has limits. Public displays of unity can help calm markets and reassure domestic audiences, but they cannot fully offset repeated threats directed at allies from the alliance’s most powerful member.

The central question now is whether Trump’s remarks are negotiating tactics, as some supporters argue, or the prelude to actual policy — trade penalties, renewed pressure over Greenland or a real shift in U.S. force posture. European governments are also watching whether the summit concludes with a clear and unambiguous reaffirmation of collective defense, or merely with another carefully managed show of solidarity.

Why This Matters Now

The significance of the Ankara summit lies not only in the words exchanged there, but in the moment at which they were delivered.

NATO is in the middle of a high-stakes transition. It is trying to convince Washington that Europe is finally taking defense seriously, convince Moscow that deterrence is hardening and convince Ukraine that Western support will endure. Trump’s interventions complicated all three tasks at once.

Even if none of his threats turns into immediate policy, the uncertainty can carry its own cost. Deterrence relies on clarity. Alliances rely on trust. And in a period when NATO is trying to prove that it can adapt to a more dangerous world, the most unsettling message from Ankara was that its deepest vulnerabilities may still be political, not military.