NATO Heads to Ankara

NATO's Ankara Summit is expected to centre on three issues: defence investment, defence industry, and support for Ukraine. With a short agenda, focussed on practicalities, Allies hope to project unity, resolve, and continued progress in building a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO. But there remains a risk that strains in the transatlantic relationship will surface and overshadow the event.

The transatlantic relationship has deteriorated greatly since Allied Heads of State and Government last met in the Hague a little over a year ago. In November, the US released a new National Security Strategy, bizarrely suggesting that Europe is facing “civilizational erasure”. In January, President Trump refused to rule out the use of force to annex Greenland and threatened to impose tariffs on European states for supporting Denmark. In February, the US attacked Iran, starting a war that few Europeans agree with, and a lingering dispute about how far the Allies should be expected to follow US foreign policy priorities.

Allies cannot expect to bridge these deep fissures in Ankara. Instead, the Summit will focus on three areas where they should be able to demonstrate progress, resolve, and unity. The first is defence spending and capability development, meaning primarily, the European Allies’ progress in building what the Alliance calls a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO.

Building Capability

NATO will not release new official defence spending data before the summit. But according to last year’s figures, the European Allies and Canada increased their total defence spending by almost 16% from 2024-2025 (constant 2021 prices) and 19% the year before, far exceeding year-on-year growth in the preceding decade. The Secretary General has also made much of the ‘Trump Trillion’—the increase in European and Canadian defence spending since 2017.

On the downside, once released, this year’s official figures will likely record that the defence spending of a small number of Allies has slipped below 2% of GDP. This is unfortunate, given the emphasis that the US places on the defence spending targets—3.5% of GDP on core spending and 1.5% on defence-related spending—agreed last year in the Hague.

When it comes to capabilities, the European Allies have considerably lengthened the list of forces they will make available to SACEUR during crisis and wartime—the NATO Force Model. This includes new allocations that will partly compensate for the units that the US announced it would withdraw from the list. It is also likely that Allies will also use the occasion of the summit to announce a raft of new capability programmes and initiatives, including in the defence industrial domain.

This will be NATO’s second focus for the summit. Defence industrial capacity will need to continue to ramp up on both sides of the Atlantic to underpin both Europe’s rearmament and its continued assistance to Ukraine. Beyond acting in a coordinating role, NATO has few tools with which to steer the defence industry. The Allies can, though, send strong signals of their commitment to deep and long-term rearmament, including through the NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum that will run alongside the summit itself. The US, which has made “supercharging” its own defence industrial base one of four lines of effort in its National Defense Strategy, will be keen to ensure that its own manufacturers are not excluded from Europe’s rearmament efforts.

Ukraine

The summit’s third focus will be support for Ukraine, which NATO seeks to make more equitable, predictable, and sustainable. In the run-up to the summit, the Allies have been unable to reach consensus on the Secretary General’s proposal that they should commit to spending 0.25% of GDP on assistance for Ukraine. This revives an earlier Estonian proposal which, if implemented, would guarantee annual support to Ukraine of around 120 bn euros. But whether the Allies will agree to a target, and what that target might be, will most likely not be resolved until leaders sit down together in Ankara.

The Ankara Declaration is expected, like last year’s Hague Declaration, to be short. In its official communications, NATO is very attached to ‘agreed language’. The declaration will thus probably refer once again to NATO’s “ironclad” commitment to collective defence and repeat the somewhat weak characterisation of Russia as a long-term threat.

In addition, there may be a few words on hybrid warfare. Enhanced vigilance activities, such as Baltic Sentry, indicate NATO’s increased readiness to become involved in this previously strictly national responsibility. The Declaration will also likely include some delicately crafted words about the war in Iran.

Alliance Politics

All-in-all, NATO continues to travel in the right direction. The European Allies are stepping up to assume a larger share of the security burden and in Brussels, planners are codifying their commitments in the concrete inventories and plans that give the Alliance confidence and credibility. In this regard, there is every reason for the Ankara Summit to be a success.

However, NATO is a political alliance too, and it is not unimaginable that politics will cast a shadow over Ankara. Pete Hegseth’s intention to announce deeper US troop reductions in Europe as the summit approached—guaranteed to spoil a party—was halted by his colleagues. Still, he used his intervention at the June defence ministerial to castigate Allies for freeriding and for their “shameful” response to the war in Iran. Unusually, these remarks were publicised by the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, just days before the summit, President Trump has used his Truth Social platform to indicate continuing displeasure at the disparity in defence spending between the US and the European Allies. Reality TV-style cliffhanger, or foreshadowing the disruption of a carefully engineered summit? As he himself likes to say, “You’ll find out.”

Views expressed in ICDS publications are those of the author(s).