President Donald Trump has recast a generations-old transatlantic alliance built on shared democratic values into a framework he’s more comfortable dealing with — a business.
He’s persuaded NATO members to turbocharge their own defense spending and to invest heavily in American arms for Ukraine. This week, at the annual meeting of alliance leaders, the U.S. president will again turn the focus into how much Europeans can spend on American military equipment.
The shift, which reflects the administration’s increasingly transactional approach to some of America’s closest allies, risks muscling out discussions about how to expand membership or defend NATO’s eastern flank against Russia. And it has strained the bonds that once kept the group intact — turning the alliance into one shaped more by national interest than shared ideals.
“Europe is still dependent on the U.S. for a while,” said a European diplomat. “It is therefore not in our interest to pick fights. But we also need to make the U.S. understand in assertive ways that Europe is not [to be taken] for granted, that we have our interests, too.”
Matt Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, emphasized the economic aspect of this year’s summit, which will take place in Ankara, Turkey, on July 7 and 8.
Washington “is welcoming European efforts to increase defense production and reduce regulations,” he told reporters days before the forum. “But we certainly do not support the protectionist language that oftentimes many European defense initiatives have included. That’s one area that may come up during the summit, and that we expect that we can come to some agreement on.”
Whitaker praised allies for having committed nearly $120 billion in defense spending over the past year, with half of it on American-made equipment, and called it a “good start.”
That investment is significantly higher than last year’s summit, where allies crowed about the extra $90 billion they had invested. It follows Trump’s demand that allies boost their defense spending from 2 percent of GDP to 5 percent or risk losing U.S. support. The president has repeatedly threatened to leave the alliance if countries do not follow through. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has tied higher defense spending with the faster sale of U.S. arms to allies.
That business-first attitude has, to some degree, spanned each of Trump’s six annual summits across his two terms. But it has become increasingly clear as the president floats seizing Greenland, wavers on U.S. support for Ukraine and slaps harsh tariffs on NATO members. The approach also pulls from the Trump playbook of demanding that the world buy American, without much in the way of reciprocal trade agreements.
Europe is playing the game — at least for now. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, in a visit to Washington last month, said European investments support 110,000 American jobs through $300 billion in orders for U.S. arms. And the United Kingdom and Germany, days before the summit, announced plans to produce U.S. weapons in their countries under license.
“The secretary general wants to make the summit into a deal-making event where companies announce collaborations,” said a second European diplomat, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “If Trump sees the defense industry event as positive, then he may also consider the Ankara summit and hopefully NATO as a positive thing.”
European officials concede they won’t be able to come up with anything nearly as dramatic in Ankara as they did at last year’s summit in The Hague. But they point to plans to announce deals worth billions of dollars, along with a defense industry forum that will take place alongside the summit.
“We want to get in there, make our spending and security pledges and get out before anything goes wrong,” said a third European diplomat. “We need to do it for our own security, but also obviously, there is another element to it.”
The White House and Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment. But Trump on Thursday decried countries such as Germany for not doing their part financially. “The United States spends more money on NATO than any other country, by far, to protect them, without getting any benefit from so doing,” he wrote on social media.
NATO members have felt particularly stiff-armed in recent months after Trump surprised NATO allies with announcements of troop pullouts from Germany and canceled deployments to Poland.
Europe also remains on edge over the Ukraine war and Russia’s forays closer to NATO’s eastern edge. Leaders are grappling with how the continent will defend itself with an America that is less interested in sacrificing blood and treasure on the continent. The Pentagon is expected to cancel a plan to send Tomahawk missiles to Germany, partly because officials are concerned Russia will view it as an escalation, leaving Berlin with few answers for its pressing long-range weapons needs.
The Defense Department this year also moved two offices that have traditionally handled foreign military sales under its acquisition and sustainment shop. The move is part of a wider reorganization meant to prioritize defense exports and encourage countries to buy American equipment.
The administration has, in recent weeks, made even more clear its desire to refashion the alliance. Hegseth delivered a browbeating to NATO defense ministers last month in Brussels, criticizing Europe’s political culture and warning officials the U.S. was reconsidering its military footprint on the continent. He also said the Pentagon has launched a review of troops stationed there.
NATO is little more than a “paper-tiger” that maintains an “unhealthy codependence” on U.S. forces, the Pentagon chief said. He complained that allies didn’t help the U.S. in the Iran war, although they were neither briefed on it beforehand nor asked for assistance until Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, which about 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through.
The alliance “needs to go back to a real hard-line military alliance,” he said. One “that has real military capabilities capable of deterring right here on the continent and taking the lead for the conventional defense of Europe.”
