Trump's NATO Criticisms Set Stage for Tense Summit in Turkey

Just days before his arrival in Turkey for the annual NATO summit, President Trump made it clear that in his mind, he and the world's largest defense alliance are not on good terms.

"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 posted on social media on July 2, adding, "Ridiculous!"

And so his arrival in Ankara kicks off another potentially tense meeting between the leader of the alliance's key superpower and the other member nations, who have watched him criticize the organization for a decade.

Trump's U.S. leadership has led to a tumultuous decade for the world's biggest defense alliance. During his first term, he railed against the 77-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization, calling it "obsolete" and accusing NATO members of failing to pay their fair share. French President Emmanuel Macron, acknowledging Trump's tenuous commitment, said the allies were suffering from the "brain death of NATO." The alliance then experienced a resurgence in the face of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which mobilized member states to address the conflict.

But in his second term, Trump has resumed his complaints about NATO, specifically focusing on burden-sharing within the organization. He also angered member nations last year with his insistence last year that the U.S. would take over Greenland.

As thirty-two-member countries gather this week, Western defense industry experts say they are holding their breath and praying nothing interesting actually happens.

It is likely to be less substantive than previous summits, according to Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C.

"There is a bit of summit fatigue when it comes to NATO. There are not usually summits every single year of the NATO alliance's history," Bergmann said. "What you have here is a lot of smoke and mirrors, to sort of keep President Trump engaged in supporting the NATO alliance. This is an effort to get through the summer summit period without the Transatlantic Alliance fracturing and breaking apart."

Staying committed to increasing defense spending, improving industry and military supply chains, and the war in Ukraine are all on the agenda this year.

"In Ankara we are going to show the world that we are delivering on the commitment we made in the Hague last year, we will breathe life into the concept known as NATO 3.0 a stronger Europe and a stronger NATO," Mark Rutte, NATO's secretary general, said in a recent Washington speech.

The idea of NATO 3.0 comes from the Pentagon – where U.S. military leadership under Trump wants Europe to take responsibility for its own security and rely less on the United States.

"The approach from the policy side within the Pentagon is to dramatically change how NATO is structured, and really shift the responsibility for defending Europe to Europe, and to pull US forces back and pull US forces out. The goal of the NATO Secretary General is to stop that," Bergmann said.

For the Trump administration, meanwhile, the summit will be another opportunity to continue pressuring other nations regarding their defense spending.

"President Trump fully expects that all allies will step up immediately and get on the path to 5% and do it with urgency," U.S. ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker said in a Sunday call with reporters.

While there's been a lot of Trump-driven focus on the need for Europeans to increase their defense spending, Bergmann says there's a bigger problem. For decades EU countries have been coordinating and integrating their defense with the United States, instead of each other.

"We are in charge of everything in defending Europe, which is, by the way, what the United States has wanted. As much as we complain about deadbeat Europeans, we have never wanted the European Union to become a forceful defense actor, because it would undermine our influence in Europe," he said, adding that it would take a lot of time and work to change that.

The weight of European security has been a decades-long debate, according to Ian Lesser, who studies the alliance for the German Marshall Fund in Brussels.

"I think there's a broad consensus in the alliance that in the future NATO is going to be a more European NATO, though certainly not a NATO without the United States. I think that's extremely unlikely, and obviously very undesirable," he said.

NATO chief hopes to keep Trump happy

Rutte's mission has been keeping the alliance together - which means keeping Trump happy, analysts say.

"The wild card here, as was the case last year, is primarily with President Trump," says Torrey Taussig, the director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan international affairs organization. "We won't know if the summit was a true success until after the press conferences have closed and allied leaders are wheels up and leaving Ankara."

In recent months, President Trump has expressed significant frustrations with NATO for not doing enough to support the U.S.-Israeli-led war in Iran.

"I just want their loyalty," Trump said of European allies during a recent Oval Office meeting with Rutte. "We're so loyal to them, we're always fighting for them."

But Taussig says European allies were reluctant to get involved in the Iran war because they were not consulted in advance.

At the summit a lot will ride on the personal dynamics between leaders.

"Rutte has proven, I think, to be relatively effective in appealing to Trump's more political nature," Taussig said.

Rutte has been relying on hard data to show president Trump the progress NATO has made over the last year. For example, Europeans and Canada increased their defense spending by 20%. At the 2025 NATO summit in the Hague, allies committed to raising their annual defense spending to 5% of their GDP by 2035 - up from 2%.

"This is a president who views a lot of foreign policy as transactional, and alliances don't fit into that," Taussig said. "That being said, I don't have any reason to believe that this president wants to see the alliance fail on his watch. He likes to be part of groups of winners, and if the alliance can show that it is making progress, that it is boosting its defenses and that the president was a part of that solution, that would be a positive outcome."

Turkey plays a key role as summit host

Part of the attraction for Trump attending the summit is the host country - home to one of a handful of world leaders who have maintained a good relationship with the U.S. president.

"Except for the fact that it was being held in Turkey by President Erdogan, I don't think I would have gone to it," Trump said at the Oval Office meeting with Rutte.

In recent years, Turkey has played a spoiler within NATO, slowing down the accession of Sweden and Finland in 2023 and 2024. The country's independent streak and close economic ties with Russia also caused tensions with the U.S. and E.U.

At the same time, Turkey has the second-largest army in the alliance, and a booming defense industry. Its geopolitical leverage has increased significantly, due to its military support for Ukraine and growing influence in the Middle East, after the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and a weakened Iran.

The most important dynamic at play, however, according to Taussig and Bergmann, will likely be the affinity Trump feels for strongman president Erdogan.

"With regard to this particular summit, I actually think the bilateral relationship between President Erdogan and President Trump will help buffet some of the tensions that we see in the alliance right now," Taussig says.

In the past few months, Ankara has been frantically undergoing a makeover in preparation for the summit, repainting buildings, planting roses and unveiling a VIP airport near Erdogan's presidential complex.

It's not without controversy, however, says Bergmann. Under Erdogan's leadership Turkish democracy has seen significant backsliding, including crackdowns on political opposition and freedom of press.