Trump won big spending promises from NATO last year. This week in Turkey, he’ll try to enforce them
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump He got what he wanted from NATO Last year’s summit: an alliance whose members have largely agreed to demands to increase defense spending.
This week it Meets with leaders in Türkiye his mission apply this saying.
The speed with which most NATO countries heeded Trump’s call to spend 5 percent of their annual gross domestic product on defense over the next decade shows how the US president is reshaping the alliance and shaping it to his will; On the other hand, he continues to argue with the members. Iran warhis flirting Annexation of Greenlandand various personal conflicts.
“President Trump expects all allies to step up immediately and get on the path to 5 percent, and to do so urgently,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker told reporters ahead of this week’s summit in Ankara.
Trump leaves Monday evening to attend the summit, and for days before the trip he has been voicing complaints about how much the United States spends on defense compared to other countries. This despite efforts Mark RutteHe is the alliance’s secretary general who tried to feed the tumultuous US leader’s ego at an Oval Office meeting last month. There he displayed large charts on easels showing what he called “”. Trump Trillion ” — How much allies have increased their spending commitments since 2017.
Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, described the Ankara meeting as the “first report card” after last year’s summit in The Hague.
“If NATO members play their cards right — if leaders show determination and a reasonable plan to meet these spending targets — it will allow President Trump to take a victory lap,” Coffey said.
Trump will meet with Ukrainian Zelenskyy
Trump left last month G7 summit in france supported by support from their counterparts for an interim agreement To end the war with Iran. He also praised the unity among leaders who tried to sideline Trump to increase security aid in Ukraine’s fight with Russia.
This war, now in its fifth year, is expected to be the main focus of the Ankara summit. The White House said Trump will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday. Trump met with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 4.
Trump also plans to meet with Syrian President Ahmed al-Shara on the sidelines of the summit. The White House hasn’t offered targets for this debate, but it sounds like Trump has set Talked about Syria in public It is playing a larger role in the fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Al-Sharaa, who led an Islamic rebel group and whose rebel forces overthrew former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said he had no interest in doing so.
US president also plans separate meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoganWho is the host of the summit? Trump is seen as a close friend.
However, he does not have any bilateral meetings planned with other leaders. Despite the positive atmosphere of the G7 summit, Trump reignited the fights as soon as he returned to the USA.
declared this Keir Starmer Claiming that Starmer had “failed badly” on immigration and energy, he would resign as British prime minister before the embattled leader made it official. Meanwhile, Trump, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni begged him for a photo and violent denial by him and the cancellation of the country’s foreign minister’s visit to the United States.
Despite this negative impact, Trump further fueled the incident on Sunday by posting a photo of Meloni smiling at him on social media along with the words “HE NEEDS A RESTRICTION ORDER.”
Trump’s relations with Canadian Prime Minister are tense Mark Carneyand while he was President of France Emmanuel Macron fascinated Trump a lavish dinner Things were not always smooth sailing between the two leaders at the Palace of Versailles last month.
Aware of these tensions, a bipartisan group of senators is heading to the top again this year; He seeks to represent broad support for the alliance on Capitol Hill and serve as a counterbalance to Trump’s often harsh stance toward NATO.
“They are our best allies, they are our best trading partners, they are critical to our national security and economic success, and we need to foster those relationships,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who led the Ankara delegation. “This is part of what Congress understands that the administration doesn’t understand.”
Trump’s team argues for more changes to NATO
The summit comes as the Trump administration envisions what it calls “NATO 3.0,” an alliance in which Europe would assume most of its security needs and allow the United States to shift its focus elsewhere.
The strategy was: Summarized by Elbridge ColbyUS undersecretary of defense at a meeting of NATO defense ministers earlier this year.
Then, in a stern speech to other NATO defense ministers last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth turned up the pressure by announcing that the United States would conduct a six-month review of its forces in Europe. This surprised countries in the alliance, which had anticipated coordinating with the Trump administration during the transition process.
Trump himself caused a lot of confusion earlier this year. send conflicting signals On the matter, he announced that he would send 5,000 US troops to Poland, weeks after ordering the withdrawal of the same number of forces from the continent.
Shaheen said the NATO 3.0 concept “failed to understand, and this administration consistently fails to understand, the threat that Putin and Russia pose to Europe and then to the United States.”
Europe increases spending but still relies on US
Last year the US president driving factor A broad target reached at The Hague for NATO countries to spend 5% of their GDP on defense over the next decade.
Of this, 3.5 percent will be allocated to core defense expenditures, and the rest will be allocated to related expenditures such as infrastructure. Spain announced at the time that it could not reach these levels, and some expressed reservations about this ambitious target.
Despite increased commitments and spending, experts say many parts of the continent remain dependent on the United States for defense if they are attacked. The defining feature of the NATO alliance is that an armed attack on one member is considered an attack on all members.
“This is the reality for most Europeans,” said Liana Fix, senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations. Most of them, he said, would be unable to defend themselves without the United States “even if they started to develop all of these things.”
Beyond the spending commitment, NATO has worked to accommodate Trump in other ways.
The alliance was introduced earlier this year “Arctic Sentry” A NATO-led military exercise aimed at countering Russian and Chinese activities in the region. This also means addressing Trump’s repeated remarks. Threats to take over GreenlandBecause the Republican president insisted that the United States should take over the semi-autonomous region of Denmark for strategic security reasons.
___
Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in Washington and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.
